Position in chronology
TCBI 2/1, 50
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic account tablet, probably from Zabalam in southern Iraq — one of the great cult cities of the goddess Inanna — written around the middle of the third millennium BCE. It records seed barley handed out from the goddess's shrine to six named men, each receiving a measured amount, from three gur down to a few ban. Documents like this are the bookkeeping of temple agriculture: the sanctuary supplied the seed, and the recipients were expected to sow it and return the harvest. The tablet is a single palm-sized lump of clay, inscribed on both faces, with the summary and the temple's name reserved for the reverse.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley issued as seed grain: Mar-tum, 3 gur; Il-su-su, 1 gur; Ur-šubur, 2 barig; Lugal-ildu, 1 barig; Lugal-tir, 1 barig; Mar-da, 4 ban. The total was disbursed from the shrine of Inanna.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 gur of barley — Mar-tum; 1 (gur) — Il-su-su; 2 barig — Ur-šubur; 1 barig — Lugal-ildu; 1 barig — Lugal-tir; 4 ban of barley — Mar-da. (reverse) Seed-grain, from the shrine given, (of) Inanna.
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
3(asz@c) sze gur mar-tum 1(asz@c) il-su2-su2 2(barig@c) ur-szubur 1(barig@c) lugal-ildu3 1(barig@c) lugal-tir 4(ban2@c) mar-da sze-numun esz3-ta szum2-ma inanna
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TCBI 2/1, 50. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Banca d'Italia, Rome, Italy (P382059) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.