Position in chronology
Adab 0830
About this tablet
A short letter on clay from Adab in southern Iraq, written in the Akkadian Empire period (c. 2300–2150 BCE). A man named Me-zi writes to his superior — addressed simply as "my lord" — about a sizeable tract of farmland, some 20 bur (roughly 130 hectares), that was handed over the previous year but whose transfer was never formally validated. A claim has been entered against it, and Me-zi, reckoning the outstanding barley at 5 gur, promises to make good the shortfall. It is an ordinary piece of estate paperwork, and precisely because it is ordinary it shows how land title, seasonal accounting and personal liability were argued out in writing among Sumerian-speaking officials under Akkadian rule.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
To my lord — from Me-zi. Last year Lugal-mu handed over the twenty-bur field to him, but the transfer was never formally confirmed. Since a claim has now been registered against it, and with a view to making restitution, if [the next line is broken] ... Lugal-mu ... The barley involved comes to 5 gur, and I will pay it back. The final lines on the reverse are damaged, and several words in the middle of the letter are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineTo my lord, thus (says) Me-zi: 2 bur'u (= 20 bur) of field — last year Lugal-mu [gave] to him. It was not confirmed. Because he lodged a claim (lit. "set it before the eye"), for the sake of its replacement, if [...] Lugal-mu [...] ... [...] Its barley: 5 gur [...] I shall repay (it).
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
a-na be-li2# en-ma# me-zi# 2(bur'u@c) _GAN2_ im-ma lugal-mu# _in-na-[szum2_] la-ba-gi-in _igi# bi2-in-<gar?>-ra-sze3_ _mu# su2-ga-bi-[sze3_] _tukum#-bi_ [...] lugal#-mu ab-[...] mu# [...] _sze-bi 5(asz)#? [... gur_] _ga-an-[su?_]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0830. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P217541) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-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.
Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.