Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 150
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), dating to around 2500 BCE, recording an allocation of grain and brewing ingredients to a crew of boatmen. The commodities — barley, emmer wheat, fine flour, dabin-flour, groats, beer bread, malt, and beer-grade barley — are precisely the raw inputs of Mesopotamian brewing and baking. The goods are issued on behalf of an official named Annessum, out of an institution called 'the house of the son,' and dated to the month of ewe-shearing in the local Adab calendar. Boatmen were the freight-carriers of the Sumerian economy and were routinely provisioned by central storehouses, making this a glimpse of how an ancient logistics network was fed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records a delivery of grain and brewing supplies. Two large measures arrive: one of ordinary barley, one of emmer wheat. Smaller amounts follow — fine flour, coarser dabin-flour, groats, an unknown quantity of beer bread, two measures of malt, and three measures of barley set aside specifically for brewing. All of it goes to the boatmen, issued under the authority of Annessum from the storehouse known as 'the house of the son.' The transaction was recorded in the month of ewe-shearing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gur of barley; 1 gur of emmer wheat; 2 barig of fine flour; 3 barig of dabin-flour; 2 barig of groats; [n unit(s) of] beer bread; 2 barig of malt; 3 barig of barley — it is (for) beer — (for) the boatmen, Annessum, it is the house of the son; month: ewe-shearing.
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) sze gur 1(asz@c) ziz2 gur 2(barig@c) zi3 sig15 3(barig@c) dabin 2(barig@c) nig2-ar3-ra [n] bappir 2(barig@c) munu4# 3(barig@c) sze kasz#-kam ma2-lah4-ne an-ne-szum2 e2-dumu-kam iti ga2#-udu-ur4
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 150. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252777) — 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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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.