Position in chronology
BIN 08, 081
About this tablet
A bread-ration ledger from an Early Dynastic Sumerian institution, probably a temple or palace storehouse, dated roughly to 2600–2400 BCE. The scribe lists hundreds of rations by type and quality — old bread, wide bread, dried/hard bread, and specialist preparations — then assigns them to named recipients and titled officials such as an overseer and his deputy, an elder, and several individuals known only by personal name. Two entries explicitly flag deficits: amounts that were supposed to be deposited in the main storehouse or temple treasury but were never delivered. The closing lines shift into summary accounting format, tallying the outstanding balances held against three named officials — the institutional bookkeeping that kept a large workforce fed and accountable.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The account runs as follows: 420 units of old bread; 300 of the wide-format loaves; 418 of the dried/hard grade; 358 of that same grade, plus one šu-bad portion and a half-unit besides. The overseer and deputy-overseer received 301 GIŠ.BAD rations; En-tar received 302 of the dried grade; the KID-type bread comes to 121 units; the elder received 179 GIŠ.BAD portions. One line is too damaged to read. Puni-dug received 62 dried-grade rations. Two lots of 120 units each were never paid into the storehouse or the temple — they remain outstanding. The ledger closes with three personal accounts: Ur-KUSZ2 owes or is owed 241, Huni-[x] 121, and NI-a a mere 5.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine420 — old bread-rations 300 — wide [bread] 418 — kusz3-type, base-grade 358 — kusz3, 1 šu-bad, ½ 301 — GIŠ.BAD — overseer and deputy-overseer 302 — kusz3 — En-tar 121 — ninda-KID bread 179 — GIŠ.BAD — the elder [...] x — [...]-na 62 — kusz3 — Puni-dug 120 BAD kusz3 — not deposited in the storehouse 120 BAD — [Ekur(?)] — not deposited 241 — account of Ur-KUSZ2 121 — account of Huni-[x] 5 — account of NI-a
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
7(gesz2@t) nindax(DU) libir 5(gesz2@t) dagal 7(gesz2@t) la2 2(disz@t) kusz3 ur2 6(gesz2@t) la2 2(disz@t) kusz3 1(disz@t) szu-bad 1/2(disz) 5(gesz2@t) 1(disz@t) |GISZ.BAD| ugula nu-banda3 5(gesz2@t) 2(disz@t) kusz3 en-tar 2(gesz2@t) 1(disz@t) ninda KID 3(gesz2@t) la2 1(disz@t) |GISZ.BAD| ab-ba [...] x gu-na 1(gesz2@t) 2(disz@t) kusz3 pu3-ni-du10 2(gesz2@t)# BAD# kusz3 e2-a nu-si 2(gesz2@t) BAD e2-kur? nu-si 4(gesz2@t) 1(disz@t) nig2-ka9 ur-KUSZ2 2(gesz2@t) 1(disz@t) nig2-ka9 hu-ni-x () 6(disz@t) la2 1(disz@t) nig2-ka9 NI-a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — BIN 08, 081. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Nies Babylonian Collection, Yale Babylonian Collection, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (P221564) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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.