Position in chronology
MAD 1, 327
About this tablet
A granary ledger from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar in eastern Iraq) in the Old Akkadian period, around 2300 BCE, when the city lay under the empire of the kings of Akkad. The scribe tallies very large stocks of barley — thousands of gur, each gur roughly 300 liters — held in a 'new granary' and credited to named individuals, then draws a grand total and books a small outgoing lot of seed grain to a man named Ilī-dan. It is a snapshot of how a provincial administration tracked its single most important asset: grain.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley on the books: 3,240 gur sit in the new granary, and another 304 gur are credited to Arʾim. A further entry — the figures are broken away — records barley assigned to someone else, noted as currently on hand, along with an amount ending in 124 gur. The running total comes to something over 2,638 gur of barley, though damage to the tablet obscures part of the sum. Finally, 10 gur of barley were issued as seed grain to Ilī-dan and written off as an expenditure.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 3,240 gur of barley — 2. that of the new granary; 3. 304 gur of barley — 4. that of Arʾim; 5. [...] gur of barley [...] 6. [that(?) f]or [...] 7. which are on hand(?); 8. [...] 124 [gur of barley]. 9. Total(?): [...] 2,640 minus 2(?) [...] gur of barley. 10. 10 gur of barley, (as) seed: 11. Ilī-dan. 12. Expended.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
5(gesz'u@c) 4(gesz2@c) _sze gur_ szu _guru7 gibil_ 5(gesz2@c) 4(asz@c) _sze gur_ szu ar-i-im [...] _sze gur_ [...] [szu? a]-na [...] i-ba-se11#-u3#? [...] 2(gesz2@c) 4(asz@c) [_sze gur_] szunigin#? [...] 4(gesz'u@c) 4(gesz2@c) _la2_ 2(asz@c)#? [...] _sze gur_ 1(u@c) _sze gur numun_ i3-li2-dan _e3-a_
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 1, 327. 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 (P215155) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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Related sources
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.