Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 144
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Adab, southern Iraq, dating to roughly 2500 BCE. It records the disbursement of four staple brewing and milling commodities — fine flour, beer-bread, malt, and coarse groats, each measured in one large vessel (gur) — to an official named Šeš-bad who held the title of cupbearer. The goods were drawn from a deputy official's stores and allocated to an institution called the e₂-dumu, the 'son's house.' This is the routine paperwork of an institutional brewery or kitchen: these four ingredients recur together across dozens of tablets from the same city precisely because bread and beer were the backbone of the Sumerian ration economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One large measure each of fine flour, beer-bread, malt, and coarse groats was issued to Šeš-bad, the cupbearer, out of the deputy official's stock. The goods were allocated to the e₂-dumu establishment. This transaction was recorded during the month of the first barley harvest.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gur of fine flour 1 gur of beer-bread 1 gur of malt 1 gur of groats [Šeš]-bad, the cupbearer — from the deputy; it was given to him; [at the] e₂-dumu Month: the first barley harvest (sze-sag-sig15-ga)
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) zi3 sig15 gur 1(asz@c) bappir gur 1(asz@c) munu4 gur 1(asz@c) nig2-ar3-ra gur szesz#-bad3 sagi# ki nu-banda3 an-na-szum2 e2#-dumu iti sze-sag-sig15-ga
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 144. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252767) — 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.