Position in chronology
MAD 1, 289
About this tablet
A grain-distribution account from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar in Iraq) during the Old Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2200 BCE. A scribe lists eight men, each receiving between one and four gur (a gur is roughly 300 liters) of gu-nida, a prized variety of hulled grain, and closes the account with a checked total of twenty gur. It is a snapshot of everyday bookkeeping in one of Mesopotamia's great administrative traditions — the arithmetic still adds up perfectly, over four thousand years later.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A simple ledger of grain allotments: Šu-gubu, Galzu, and Dingir-kal each get 4 gur of gu-nida grain; Ilulu, Puzrum, and Ilī-dan each get 2 gur; Dingir-su-kal and Ilu-danu each get 1 gur. The clerk then totals it up — 20 gur of gu-nida grain in all — and the figures check out exactly.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 4 gur of gu-nida grain — 2. Šu-gubu; 3. 4 (gur) — Galzu; 4. 4 (gur) — Dingir-kal; 5. [2] (gur) — Ilulu; 6. 2 (gur) — Puzrum; 7. 2 (gur) — Ilī-dan; 8. 1 (gur) — Dingir-su-kal; 9. 1 (gur) — Ilu-da[nu]. 10. Total: 20 gur of gu-nida grain.
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
4(asz@c) gur gu2-nida szu-gu-bu3 4(asz@c) gal-zu 4(asz@c) dingir-kal [2(asz@c)] i3#-lu-lu 2(asz@c) puzur4-ru-um# 2(asz@c) i3-li2-dan 1(asz@c) dingir-su-kal 1(asz@c) i3-lu-da#-[nu] szunigin 2(u@c) gur gu2-nida
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 1, 289. 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 (P215118) — 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.