Position in chronology
LB 1122
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from the Old Akkadian period (roughly 2350–2200 BCE), recording measured amounts of dates handed out to or collected from a handful of named individuals — among them a chief scribe. It is the ordinary paperwork of a Mesopotamian household or institutional storeroom: quantities, names, nothing more. The final name, Lugal-nigzu, is probably the official responsible for the transaction. Tablets like this, surviving by the thousands, are our main window into how ancient administrators tracked food and labor.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A date-distribution ledger: Ur-zu gets one gur of dates (roughly 300 liters); Zaktum gets two barig (about 120 liters); Lu-šeš of Uruk gets three ban (about 30 liters); the chief scribe gets two ban (about 20 liters); and Igi-geš gets two barig. The account is signed off under the name Lugal-nigzu, presumably the official who handled the disbursement.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 gur of dates: 2. Ur-zu; 3. 2 barig: Zaktum; 4. 3 ban: Lu-šeš of Uruk(?); 5. 2 ban: the chief scribe; 6. 2 barig: Igi-geš; 7. Lugal-nigzu.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
1(asz@c) zu2-lum gur ur-zu 2(barig@c) zak-tum 3(ban2@c) lu2-szesz unu 2(ban2@c) dub-sar-mah 2(barig@c) igi-gesz lugal-nig2-zu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC) ?) — LB 1122. 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 (P389536) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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Related sources
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.