Position in chronology
MAD 1, 271
About this tablet
A small barley account from the Old Akkadian period (c. 2350–2200 BCE), written at Ešnunna in the Diyala region of Iraq. A scribe lists five people — three men and two women, to judge by the names — each receiving or owing a measured amount of barley, and then adds the figures into a grand total. It is the everyday arithmetic of an ancient granary office, and the sum on the last line checks out exactly, showing the scribe did his math correctly.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a barley ledger with five entries. Ubarum gets the largest share, 1 gur and 1 barig (about 360 liters); Naṣrum gets 4 barig (about 240 liters); Nin-nin receives 4 ban (about 40 liters); and Ubartum and Abuna get 3 ban each (about 30 liters apiece). The clerk then totals it all up: 2 gur, 1 barig, and 4 ban of barley — roughly 700 liters in all — and the addition is exact.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 (gur) 1 barig — Ubarum; 2. 4 barig — Naṣrum; 3. 4 ban — Nin-nin; 4. 3 ban — Ubartum; 5. 3 ban — Abuna. 6. Total: 2 gur 1 barig 4 ban of barley.
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
1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) u-ba-ru-um 4(barig@c) na-as,-ru-um 4(ban2@c) nin-nin 3(ban2@c) u-bar-tum 3(ban2@c) a-bu-na szu-nigin2 2(asz@c) 1(barig@c) 4(ban2@c) sze gur
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 1, 271. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P215101) — 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.