Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 143
About this tablet
A small lenticular administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, Iraq), dating to the Early Dynastic III period, roughly 2500–2350 BCE. It records a disbursement of brewing and baking commodities — flour, beer-bread bricks, malt, and coarse grain — totaling one gur and six barig in measured quantities. Three individuals, Ab-ba, An-na-šum, and a third whose name is broken, are named as responsible parties under a supervising official (maškim), with the transaction tied to an institution called the House of the Son. The date is given as the month of the Du6-ku3 festival, anchoring this entirely routine brewery-supply record to a specific point in the temple calendar. Hundreds of nearly identical tablets survive from Adab — the collective paperwork of a functioning urban grain economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One gur of flour, along with two barig each of beer-bread bricks, malt, and coarse grain, were issued in a single transaction. The parties responsible were Ab-ba, An-na-šum, and a third individual whose name is now lost. Their supervisor (maškim) is noted, and the whole transaction falls under the House of the Son institution. The date: the month of the Du6-ku3 — the Holy Mound — festival.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gur of flour (dabin) [— partially preserved —]; 2 barig of beer bread (bappir); 2 barig of malt (munu4); 2 barig of coarse grain (nig2-ar3-ra). Ab-ba, An-na-šum, Ur-[...] — their overseer (maškim). Institution: House of the Son (e2-dumu). Month: Du6-ku3 (the Holy Mound festival).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(asz@c) dabin gur# 2(barig@c) bappir 2(barig@c) munu4 2(barig@c) nig2-ar3-ra ab-ba an-na-szum2 ur-[...] maszkim-bi e2-dumu iti du6-ku3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 143. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252765) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.