Position in chronology
MAD 1, 334
About this tablet
An Old Akkadian (Sargonic) account tablet from Ešnunna, in the Diyala region of Iraq, dating to the era of the Akkadian empire (about 2300–2200 BCE). It records disbursements of barley — the staple wage-good of Mesopotamia — as rations for household servants, with one large consignment of 15 gur received by a merchant named Nabium and a final entry booked as a debt against a person called ME-Ištar. It is a small window onto how an Akkadian-period household or institution fed its dependents and extended credit, with quantities reckoned against the capacity standard of Agade, the imperial capital whose site has never been found.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A barley ledger with several entries. An unknown amount of barley went out as rations for the servants of a man whose name is partly broken, perhaps Pusu-gi; another lost amount is booked to Išarum. The largest entry is clear: 15 gur of barley (well over 3,000 liters), measured by the official standard of Agade, issued as servants' rations and received by the merchant Nabium. A further, broken quantity is entered under Ilulu, and the last line records an outstanding debt owed by (or charged to) ME-Ištar. The opening quantities are lost to damage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [n] gur of [barley], 2. [for the barley] rations of the servants 3. of [Pu]su-gi(?); 4. [n] gur of barley — 5. [I]šarum; 6. 15 gur of barley 7. for the barley rations of the servants, 8. (measured by the standard) of Agade — 9. Nabium, the merchant, 10. received (it); 11. [n] gur of barley — Ilulu; 12. [that of(?)] ME-Ištar: a debt (ḫubullum).
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
[n _sze] gur_ [a-na _sze]-ba#_ _ARAD2_ [pu3?]-su#?-gi_ [...] _sze gur_ [i]-sa-ru-um 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) _sze gur_ a-na _sze-ba ARAD2_ szu-ti a-ga-de3 na-bi2-um _dam-gar3_ im-hur [...] _sze gur_ i3-lu-lu [szu?] ME-esz18-dar hu-bu-lum
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 1, 334. 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 (P215160) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
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.