Position in chronology
MAD 5, 003
About this tablet
A barley account from Kish in the Old Akkadian period (about 2300–2200 BCE), drawn up in the royal 'gur of Agade' measure introduced under the Sargonic kings. It shows where a stock of 150 gur of grain went: some to the owners of a field, a large share to a man named Amur-ilum, part sold for half a mina of silver, and the rest kept in store. The figures add up exactly, and the account ends by recording that it was settled for the head of the household. It is a small but clear window into how a private or institutional estate converted grain into silver and balanced its books.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Grain report, measured in the standard Agade gur. The field owners received 3½ gur of barley for the išginnū of their field. Amur-ilum is down for 62 gur. Another 45 gur was sold for silver at 1½ gur per shekel, which brought in half a mina of silver. A further 39½ gur is still in store. That makes 150 gur of barley in all. Angu settled the account for the master of the house.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse/Reverse (no side division given in the source) 1. 3 gur 2 barig 3 ban of barley, (by the) gur of Agade: 2. for the išginnū of the field 3. the owners of the field received. 4. 62 gur of barley: 5. Amur-ilum. 6. 45 gur of barley 7. for silver, (at the rate of) 1 gur 2 barig 3 ban (per shekel), 8. was sold; 9. its silver: 1/2 mina. 10. 40 gur less 2 barig 3 ban of barley 11. is on hand. 12. Total: 150 gur of barley. 13. Angu 14. for the master of the house 15. settled (the account).
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(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) _sze gur_ a-ga-de3 a-na isz-gi-ni _GAN2_ be-lu _GAN2_ im-hur-ru 1(gesz2@c) 2(asz@c) _sze gur_ a-mur-dingir 4(u@c) 5(asz@c) _sze gur_ a-na _ku3_ 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) _gur_ na-di3-in _ku3_-su 1/2(asz@c) _ma-na_ 4(u@c) _la2_ 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) _sze gur_ i-ba-szi4 szunigin 2(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) _sze gur_ an-gu2 a-na _lugal e2_ u-sa-lim
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 5, 003. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P215331) — 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.