Position in chronology
JCS 01, 348, 11
About this tablet
A short business letter from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300–2200 BCE), the age of the dynasty of Sargon of Akkad. A man named Tamtalik writes to a livestock official to put on record large deliveries of barley — over three hundred gur, several tens of thousands of liters — supplied by two named men, Misua and Ida-ilum. Letters like this doubled as receipts: the final line certifies that Tamtalik has taken delivery, turning a piece of correspondence into an accounting document.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
From Tamtalik, to the livestock manager: this is to confirm the barley deliveries. Misua handed over 203 gur of barley in the standard saggal measure, and Ida-ilum handed over 143 gur — 346 gur of barley in all, standard measure. I, Tamtalik, have received the full amount.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineThus (says) Tamtalik: to the equerry (ŠUŠ₃, livestock official) speak: 203 gur of barley, (in the) saggal-measure — Misua; 143 gur of barley — Ida-ilum; Total: 346 gur of barley, (in the) saggal-measure. Tamtalik has received (it).
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
en-ma tam2-ta2-lik a-na _szusz3_ qi2-bi2 _3(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 3(asz@c) sze gur sag-gal2_ mi-su4-a _2(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 3(asz@c) sze gur_ i-da-dingir _szunigin 5(gesz2@c) 4(u@c) 6(asz@c) sze gur sag-gal2_ tam2#-ta2#-lik im#-hur#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — JCS 01, 348, 11. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, USA (P214864) — 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.
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.