Position in chronology
MAD 1, 320
About this tablet
A short grain-distribution account from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar) in the Old Akkadian period, around 2300 BCE. A scribe lists seven men — several identified by their father's name — each receiving a measured amount of barley, from a full gur down to fractions (barig). It is a snapshot of everyday payroll or ration bookkeeping in one of the earliest territorial states, showing how the Akkadian administration tracked grain person by person.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a barley ledger. Erra-ra gets 1 gur; Ša-an, son of Nūrum, gets 4 barig; Ilum-nāṣir gets 1 gur; Šamium, son of Puzur-abi, gets 3 barig; Azu-ilum, son of Mumu, gets 3 barig; Ilī-bilanī, son of Izamar, gets an amount now broken away; and a man whose name is partly lost, son of Abībī, closes the list. The final line once gave the grand total in gur of barley, but the figure is damaged.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 (gur) — Erra-ra; 2. 4 barig — Ša-an, 3. son of Nūrum; 4. 1 (gur) — Ilum-nāṣir; 5. 3 barig — Šamium, 6. son of Puzur-abi; 7. 3 barig — Azu-ilum, 8. son of Mumu; 9. [n] — Ilī-bilanī, 10. son of Izamar; 11. [...]-AN, 12. son of Abībī. 13. [Total: n] gur [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) er3-ra-ra 4(barig@c) sza-an dumu nu-ru-um 1(asz@c) dingir-na-s,i2-ir 3(barig@c) sza-mi-um dumu puzur4-a-bi 3(barig@c) a-zu-dingir dumu mu-mu [n] i3-li2-bi-la-ni dumu# i-za-mar [...]-AN dumu# a-bi2-bi2 [szunigin n sze] gur
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 1, 320. 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 (P215148) — 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.