Position in chronology
MAD 1, 331
About this tablet
An account tablet from the Old Akkadian period (c. 2300 BCE) found at Ešnunna, east of the Tigris in central Iraq. A scribe records barley allotments — mostly one gur and one barig each — issued to a list of individuals, several of them women, including one simply called 'the Subarian woman.' A dozen sheep and a young goat also appear, alongside barley rations and a running tally of grain 'on hand.' It is the routine bookkeeping of an estate or household administration, dated by one of Ešnunna's local month names.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a grain ledger. Subarītum, Tašqītum, Tata, and Tuda-šar-libbiš each received 1 gur and 1 barig of barley from the stock on hand — roughly 360 liters apiece — while Eštar-nuʾid got about 5 gur. The account also lists 12 sheep and one female kid, plus a barley ration of 1 gur, 1 barig, 1 ban, and 5 sila. A further quantity of barley on hand follows, but the line is broken, as is the next; one surviving phrase mentions the wife of Dada. The record is dated to the month of Ḫalūt.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 gur 1 barig of barley, principal on hand — 2. Subarītum; 3. 1 (gur) 1 barig — Tašqītum; 4. 1 (gur) 1 barig — Tata; 5. 1 (gur) 1 barig — Tuda-šar-libbiš; 6. 5(?) gur of barley — 7. [Eš]tar-nuʾid; 8. 12 sheep, 1 female kid; 9. barley rations: 1 gur 1 barig 1 ban 5 sila of barley; 10. [n gur of barley], principal on hand; 11. [...] 12. wife of Dada(?); 13. [Month: Ḫa]lūt.
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) 1(barig@c) sze gur sag-gal2 su-ba-ri2-tum 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) ta2-asz2-qi3-tum 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) ta-ta 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) tu-da-szar-li-bi2-isz 5(asz@c)#? sze gur [esz18]-dar-nu-id 1(u@c) 2(asz@c) udu 1(asz@c) asz2-gar3 sze-ba 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) 1(ban2@c) 5(asz@c) sila3 sze gur [n sze gur] sag#-gal2 [...] dam da-da#? [iti ha]-lu5#-ut
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 1, 331. 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 (P215158) — 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.