Position in chronology
MAD 1, 304
About this tablet
A fragmentary account of silver expenditures from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar in Iraq) in the Old Akkadian period, around 2300 BCE. A bookkeeper lists small sums of silver — a shekel or two at a time — spent on luxury goods such as aromatic resin and beads, then totals the whole in minas and notes that the account covers one year. It is a small window onto how silver functioned as money for purchasing commodities in one of Mesopotamia's early territorial states.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an annual expense ledger kept in silver. One entry records a shekel or more of silver spent on gamgam aromatic (a fragrant resin), another a shekel or more on beads, and a further few shekels on an item whose name is only partly preserved. After a gap where more entries are lost, the scribe closes with the grand total — so many minas of silver, less half a shekel — and notes that this is the account for a single year.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [n +] 1 shekel(s) of silver 2. [for ...] gamgam-aromatic (kukru) 3. [n +] 1 shekel(s) of silver 4. [for ...] beads (lit. 'eggs') 5. [n] shekel(s) of silver 6. [for ...]-šuru 7. [......] (Break) 8. [Total: n mi]na(s) less ½ (shekel and) n (shekels of) silver. 9. [That] of one year.
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
[n] 1(disz) _gin2 ku3-babbar_ [...] _szim# gam-gam_ [n] 1(disz) _gin2 ku3-babbar_ [...] _nunuz_ [n] _gin2 ku3-babbar_ [...]-szu#-ru [...] [szunigin n _ma]-na la2_ 1/2(disz) n _ku3-babbar_ [szu] 1(disz) _mu_
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 1, 304. 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 (P215132) — 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.