Position in chronology
MRAH O.5012
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic Sumerian grain-distribution record, probably dating to around 2500 BCE, tallying two consignments of 24 barley units and one of 10 units allocated to named individuals and a group associated with a fortification or city wall. The grain originates from an institutional storehouse — 'the house of Šà-lu' — and was carried by the boat of a man named Lugal-iti-da, a reminder that southern Mesopotamia's canal network made river transport the normal way to move bulk commodities. The transaction is anchored to two calendar months and fixed to the ninth day of a specific month, then formally closed with a witness clause — the standard legal seal on a delivery or advance in this period. The reference to Adab, a city-state in central Mesopotamia (modern Bismaya, Iraq), gives the document a tentative geographical home.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Twenty-four units of barley for al-mu (name uncertain); twenty-four more for URIx; ten for Giri-ni — all belonging to the men of the fortification. This barley comes from the storehouse of Šà-lu's institution and was shipped aboard the boat of Lugal-iti-da, under An-si's charge. The handover took place across the months of du6-ku3 and nig2-kiri6, specifically nine days into the month, and the grain was delivered to An-na. The transaction is connected to the city of Adab. The men named above are the witnesses to this agreement.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine24 [barley ...] al-mu (?) 24 — URIx 10 — Giri-ni men of the wall (?) Barley of the house of Šà-lu boat of Lugal-iti-da An-si Month: du6-ku3 ("pure mound") Month: nig2-kiri6 ("orchard") given to An-na Month — 9 days elapsed [of/at] Adab these are the witnesses
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(u@c) 4(asz@c) [sze ...] al-mu#? 2(u@c) 4(asz@c) urix(LAK526) 1(u@c) giri3-ni lu2 bad3#?-me sze e2 sza3-lu2-kam ma2 lugal-iti-da an-si iti du6-ku3-kam iti nig2-kiri6-kam an-na-szum2 iti# u4 9(disz@t) zal-la adab!-be2 lu2 ki-inim-ma-bi-me
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — MRAH O.5012. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium (P452986) — 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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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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.