Position in chronology
CUSAS 27, 071
About this tablet
A short business letter in Old Akkadian from the Sargonic period (around 2300 BCE), now in the Schøyen Collection. A man named Ur-Ištaran writes to Zuzu with an instruction: a quantity of barley that one person had received from another is to be handed over to two named men. Letters like this are among the earliest in human history to use the classic Mesopotamian epistolary opening 'Thus says PN to PN', and they show ordinary managers moving grain between individuals by written order rather than face to face.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Message from Ur-Ištaran to Zuzu: There is a consignment of barley — one gur and three barig, roughly 480 liters — that Sulumsu-saga received from Bazizi. Zuzu is to see that it is handed over to Buzuzu and Ur-ur. The writer adds a final note of complaint or urgency: there is nothing left, not even feed for the riding donkey. A brief, complete grain-transfer order, the ancient equivalent of a memo redirecting stock between accounts.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. Thus (says) 2. Ur-Ištaran 3. to Zuzu: 4. 1 gur 3 barig of barley 5. which from 6. Bazizi 7. Sulumsu-saga 8. received — 9. to Buzuzu 10. and Ur-ur 11. let him give (it). 12. He has nothing (even) for the riding-donkey.
Our translation engine — Fable 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
en-ma ur-isztaran a-na zu-zu 1(asz@c) 3(barig@c) _sze gur_ sza isz-de3 ba-zi-zi su-lum-su-saga im-hu-ra-ni a-na bu3-zu-zu u3 ur-ur li-di3-nam mim-ma la i3-szu4 a-ga-li-isz
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — CUSAS 27, 071. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P251906) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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.