Position in chronology
LB 1116
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), recording measured amounts of foodstuffs — including dates — handed out to or received from about a dozen named individuals. It is the routine bookkeeping of an estate or institutional household: each line pairs a quantity in the standard barig and ban capacity measures with a personal name. Tablets like this, kept by professional scribes, are our main window into how ordinary Mesopotamians were provisioned and how goods moved between people and offices.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a distribution list. Two barig of the surplus commodity went to Enlila, received from Anše-geš. Ze got one barig; four ban went to Lugal-KU's place; three ban to Ur-šekianaba; one ban to Il. Then three barig of dates, measured by the gur standard — again from the surplus stock — were booked to Ur-ninpirig and a second man whose name is hard to read. Finally, Egal-amen and Asisi account for two barig, and E-usakar for one ban. In short: a clerk's running tally of who got how much from the stores that day.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2(barig) kad-fiber(?), surplus, filled in(?) — 2. (for) Enlila, 3. from Anše-geš; 4. 1(barig) — Ze; 5. 4(ban) to (the place of) Lugal-KU; 6. 3(ban) for Ur-šekianaba(?); 7. 1(ban) — Il (the carrier?); 8. 3(barig) of dates, (reckoned by the) gur(-measure), 9. kad-fiber(?), surplus, filled in(?) — 10. (for) Ur-ninpirig(?), 11. (and) ...-kitur(?) (name written with the signs UD.NUN.TAR); 12. 2(barig) — Egal-amen(?) 13. (and) Asisi; 14. 1(ban) — E-usakar.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(barig@c) kad4 diri si en-lil2-la2 ki ansze-gesz 1(barig@c) ze2 4(ban2@c) ki lugal-KU-sze3 3(ban2@c) ur!-sze3-ki-an-a-ba 1(ban2@c) il2 3(barig@c) zu2-lum gur kad4 diri si ur-nin-pirig? |UD.NUN.TAR@v|-ki-tur? 2(barig@c) e2-gal-a-men a-si-si 1(ban2@c) e2-u4-sakar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC) ?) — LB 1116. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: de Liagre Böhl Collection, Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden, Holland (P389533) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.