Position in chronology
MAD 4, 136
About this tablet
A grain account from Umma, written in the Sargonic period around 2300–2200 BCE, when the kings of Akkad ruled southern Mesopotamia. It records a large harvest of barley, emmer and wheat, measured in the official 'large gur' capacity unit, threshed on a field described as belonging to Lagaš and connected with a man named Šara-andul, whose name honours Šara, Umma's city god. A field 'of Lagaš' in Umma records is notable because the two neighbouring cities fought over border farmland for generations. The closing note of years and months appears to give a time span or date for the account.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a harvest record. It lists 186 gur and 2 barig of barley, measured by the large standard gur, together with 10 gur less 2 barig of emmer and 4 gur 2 barig of wheat. All of it is grain that has been threshed. The account is tied to Šara-andul and to the field of Lagaš. It closes with the note '4 years, 5 months', which is either the length of time covered or the date of the record.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse/Reverse (sides not distinguished in the supplied transliteration): 1. 186 gur 2 barig of barley, by the large gur (gur sag-gal₂), 2. 10 gur less 2 barig of emmer, gur, 3. 4 gur 2 barig of wheat, <gur>: 4. threshed grain; 5. Šara-andul; 6. field 7. of Lagaš. 8. 4 years, 5 months.
Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
3(gesz2@c) 6(asz@c) 2(barig@c) sze gur sag-gal2 1(u@c) la2 2(barig@c) ziz2 gur 4(asz@c) 2(barig@c) gig <gur> sze# gesz ra-a szara2-an-dul3 a-sza3 lagasz 4(disz@t) mu 5(disz@t) iti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 136. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215296) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (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.