Position in chronology
MAD 1, 281
About this tablet
A small, badly broken administrative account from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar in eastern Iraq) in the Old Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2150 BCE. It logs deliveries of foodstuffs — barley, gu-flour, and groats — measured in ban units, with a man named Eštar-nu'id ('Praise Ištar!') recorded as the one who brought them in. Such scraps are the routine bookkeeping of a palace or household economy, and together they let historians reconstruct how grain moved through an early Mesopotamian city.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a delivery receipt, now mostly broken away. It records that Eštar-nu'id brought in about 3 ban (roughly 30 liters) of gu-flour, along with quantities of barley, more gu-flour, and groats; his name appears a second time against further entries of groats. The final legible line notes 1 ban of barley assigned to a person whose name begins Sali-. The amounts at the start of most lines, and the rest of the names, are lost to damage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [...] 3 ban(?) of gu-flour 2. [... Eštar]-nu'id 3. [br]ought (it) here. 4. [...] barley 5. [... g]u-[flour] 6. [... g]roats 7. [... Eštar]-nu'id 8. [...] groats 9. [...] ... [...] 10. 1 ban of barley: Sali-[...]
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
[...] 3(ban2@c)#? _zi3-gu_ [... esz18-dar]-nu-id [u-bi2]-lam [...] _sze_ [... _zi3]-gu#_ [... _nig2]-ar3-ra_ [... esz18-dar]-nu-id [...] _nig2#-ar3-ra_ [...] a [...] 1(ban2@c) _sze_ sa-li-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 1, 281. 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 (P215110) — 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.