Position in chronology
MAD 4, 062
About this tablet
An administrative barley account from the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, written at Umma in southern Iraq in the later third millennium BCE. It records parcels of threshed barley — ten gur each, measured by the standard 'sag-gál' gur — harvested from a named irrigated field and assigned to three men under a foreman, with the grain loaded onto the lead barge of a transport convoy. Such terse dockets are the working paperwork of the grain economy: the harvest moved by boat along the canals, and every load was counted and dated.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Thirty gur of barley in all, measured by the standard sag-gál gur: ten gur to Lugal-KA, ten for Lugal-tur, and ten to Nigar. This is threshed barley from the agar-field of A-nimgirza. The man responsible for the work gang is Lugal-KA, and the grain went out on the first barge of the shipment. Dated: year 16, month 4.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 10 gur of barley, (in) the sag-gál (standard) measure — 2. (for) Lugal-KA; 3. 10 for Lugal-tur; 4. 10 (for) Nigar. 5. Barley threshed (lit. "beaten with the stick"), 6. (from) the agar-field of A-nimgirza. 7. Foreman: Lugal-KA. 8. The lead barge (boatload). 9. 16 (is the) year, 4 (is the) month.
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(u) sze gur sag-gal2 lugal-KA 1(u) lugal-tur-sze3 1(u) nigar sze gesz ra-a agar4 a-nimgir-za ugula lugal-KA ma2 dub-sag 1(u) 6(disz@t) mu 4(disz@t) iti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 062. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215224) — 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.