Position in chronology
TCBI 2/1, 36
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic accounting tablet, probably from the area of Zabalam in southern Iraq, recording flour disbursed to — or owed by — a handful of named individuals, most of them women (Nin-mu-dib, Nin-ir, Nin-abba, Gan-e). The amounts are given in the standard dry measures of the day: barig and ban (roughly 60 and 10 liters), all reckoned against a larger total in gur. The closing line totals 14 gur over a period of seven months of the year. It is ordinary household or temple bookkeeping — the kind of routine grain ledger that makes up the bulk of the world's earliest written records.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Flour account, balance outstanding: [amount] gur. Nin-mu-dib. Maš-tur, 2 barig. KUM-tuš-še, 1 barig. Za-mu, 1 barig 2 ban. E-ḫili-su, 4 ban. Nin-ir, 2 ban. Nin-abba, 2 ban. Me-ane, 1 barig. Gan-e, 1 barig. Total: 14 gur, covering seven months of the year. The back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] gur of flour, the deficit (outstanding): Nin-mu-dib; 2 barig — Maš-tur; 1 barig — KUM-tuš-še; 1 barig 2 ban2 — Za-mu; 4 ban2 — E-ḫi-<li>-su; 2 ban2 — Nin-ir; 2 ban2 — Nin-abba; 1 barig — Me-ane; 1 barig — Gan-e; 14 (gur) — year, 7 months. (Reverse: uninscribed.)
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[...] zi3 gur la2-a nin-mu-dib 2(barig@c) masz-tur 1(barig@c) KUM-tusz-sze3 1(barig@c) 2(ban2) za3-mu 4(ban2@c) e2-hi-<li>*-su3 2(ban2@c) nin-ir* 2(ban2@c) nin-ab-ba 1(barig@c) me-an-ne2 1(barig@c) gan-e2 1(u) 4(asz) mu 7(disz@t) iti!
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC) ?) — TCBI 2/1, 36. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Banca d'Italia, Rome, Italy (P382043) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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.