Position in chronology
MAD 4, 067
About this tablet
An agricultural account from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), now in the Louvre, tallying the grain harvest from three named irrigation districts — including fields dedicated to the goddess Nintu and the god Enlil. A scribe records barley, emmer, and wheat district by district, then adds them up, and the arithmetic still checks out today: 384 + 202½ + 45½ gur of barley really does make 632. The closing note marks the grain as already threshed, ready for storage or disbursement, under the responsibility of an official named Lugal-KA.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Harvest ledger. From the A-nimgirza district: 384 gur of barley (standard measure), 52 gur of emmer, and 4 gur of wheat. From the district of the Nintu field: 202 gur and 2 barig of barley. From the district of the Enlil field: 45 gur and 2 barig of barley. Grand totals: 632 gur of barley, 52 gur of emmer, and 4 gur of wheat — the wheat total is partly broken but restorable from the entry above. All of it is threshed grain, booked under Lugal-KA.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 384 gur of barley, (in the) saggal(-measure); 2. 52 gur of emmer; 3. 4 gur of wheat: 4. (from the) irrigation district of A-nimgirza. 5. 202 gur 2 barig of barley: 6. (from the) irrigation district of the field of Nintu. 7. 45 gur 2 barig of barley: 8. (from the) irrigation district of the field of Enlil. 9. Total: 632 gur of barley, (in the) saggal(-measure); 10. total: 52 gur of emmer; 11. [total: 4] gur of wheat. 12. Threshed barley. 13. Lugal-KA.
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
6(gesz2) 2(u) 4(asz) sze gur sag-gal2 5(u) 2(asz) ziz2 gur 4(asz) gig gur agar4 a-nimgir-za 3(gesz2) 2(u) 2(asz) 2(barig) sze gur agar4 a-sza3 nin-tu 4(u) 5(asz) 2(barig) sze gur agar4 a-sza3 en-lil2-la2 szunigin 1(gesz'u) 3(u) 2(asz) sze gur sag-gal2 szunigin 5(u) 2(asz) ziz2 gur [szunigin 4(asz)] gig# gur sze [gesz] ra#-a lugal-KA
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 067. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215229) — 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.