Position in chronology
MVN 03, 094
About this tablet
This is a small clay barley-account tablet from the Early Dynastic period, probably from Girsu in southern Iraq (around the mid-third millennium BCE). It records quantities of barley — measured in gur (a large capacity unit) and barig (a sub-unit) — credited or disbursed to a series of named individuals such as Ur-abzu, Amar-abzu, and Ha-mul. Tablets like this were the everyday bookkeeping of temple or palace grain stores, tracking who received or supplied barley and in what amount. The seal impression visible on the tablet's underside is typical of the period's administrative sealing practice, marking the document as an official transaction.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a grain ledger. It opens with a large amount of barley — a little over 21 gur measured in the 'head' standard — credited to a man named Ur-abzu, with a note that the barley at that location has been accounted for ('filled'). Further down, smaller amounts are logged against other people: 6 gur 2 barig of barley for someone called TAR-USZ; 7 gur 2 barig, again marked as accounted for, tied to a place and to a man named AL-abzu; 2 barig for a person whose name is only partly readable; 2 gur for Amar-abzu; an entry labeled 'U4-sa' whose meaning isn't clear; another 2 barig (with the whole-gur figure lost) again for Amar-abzu; 1 gur for a man whose name is partly broken ('Ur-...-ka'); and a final line naming barley belonging to someone called Ha-mul. In short, it's a running tally of barley allotments to a handful of named recipients, several lines of which are damaged or only partly legible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our enginen(+) 21(?) gur saggal of barley (head-measure) — Ur-abzu. Barley, at that place, filled (si). 6 gur 2 barig — barley (of) TAR-USZ. 7 gur 2 barig, filled — barley, at the place of [...], (of) AL-abzu. 2 barig — PU₃-SAR(?), ...(?). 2 gur — Amar-abzu. U₄-sa. [n] gur 2 barig — Amar-abzu. 1 gur — Ur-...-ka. Barley (of) Ha-mul.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
n 2(u@c) 1(asz@c) sze gur saggal ur-abzu sze ki-ba si 6(asz@c) 2(barig@c)# sze TAR-USZ 7(asz@c) 2(barig@c) si sze ki [x?] AL-abzu 2(barig@c) PU3!-SAR# x? 2(asz@c) amar-abzu u4-sa [n] 2(barig@c) amar-abzu 1(asz@c) ur-x-ka sze ha-mul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — MVN 03, 094. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P222209) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-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.