Position in chronology
MAD 4, 047
About this tablet
A small ration account from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), now in the Louvre. A clerk records flour handed out to eight named individuals — men and women with Sumerian and Akkadian names — then adds the quantities up and books the lot as an official expenditure under a man named Šeša. It is a snapshot of everyday institutional bookkeeping: the paper trail of who got their flour that day.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a flour distribution list. Tašlul received 4 ban (roughly 40 liters), Ur-du 3 ban, Nig-dudu 2 ban, and five others — Eš-lil, Nana, Ummimi, AN-malu, and Šeša — 1 ban each. The clerk totals it correctly at 2 barig and 2 ban of flour (14 ban in all, reckoned in the standard gur capacity system) and closes the account with the note that this flour has been booked out as an expenditure, with Šeša named as the responsible party.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 4 ban of flour — Tašlul; 2. 1 ban — Eš-lil; 3. 3 ban — Ur-du; 4. 2 ban — Nig-dudu; 5. 1 ban — Nana; 6. 1 ban — Ummimi; 7. 1 ban — AN-malu; 8. 1 ban — Šeša. 9. Total: 2 barig 2 ban of flour (in the gur system). 10. Flour expended (zi-ga); 11. (under) Šeša.
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
4(ban2@c) zi3 ta2-asz2-lul 1(ban2@c) esz3-lil2 3(ban2@c) ur-du6 2(ban2@c) nig2-du8-du8 1(ban2@c) na-na 1(ban2@c) um-mi-mi 1(ban2@c) AN-ma-lu2 1(ban2@c) szesz-a szunigin 2(barig) 2(ban2) zi3 gur zi3 zi-ga szesz-a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 047. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215209) — 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.