Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/3, pl. 224, Bod S 188
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III-period administrative receipt from Umma, recording that a man named Šeš-kalla took delivery of 5 gur of barley (measured by the royal standard) from a person or official named Adda. The tablet is dated by the well-known year-formula 'the year Anšan was destroyed,' placing it in the reign of Šu-Suen (his 7th regnal year), and carries the impression of a seal belonging to Lugal-si-NE, a servant of the god Šara and son of Sagmu — Šara being the city god of Umma. Thousands of such barley receipts survive from the Umma archives, forming the backbone of our knowledge of Ur III grain administration.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Šeš-kalla received 5 gur of barley (by the royal measure) from Adda. The transaction is dated to the month called 'Barley at the Harbor,' in the year that Anšan was destroyed. The document bears the seal of Lugal-si-NE, an official in the service of the god Šara and son of a man named Sagmu — likely the witnessing or authorizing official for this delivery.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 gur barley, royal measure, from Adda, Šeš-kalla received. Month: "Barley at the harbor" (iti-še-KAR-ra-gal2-la), year: "Anšan was destroyed." (Seal legend:) Lugal-si-NE, servant of Šara, son of Sagmu.
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
5(asz) sze gur lugal ki ad-da-ta szesz-kal-la szu ba-ti iti sze-kar-ra-gal2-la mu an-sza-<an> ba-hul lugal-si-NE-e# ARAD2 szara2 dumu sa6-mu#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAICAB 1/3, pl. 224, Bod S 188. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šulgi y35 — Anšan destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Bod S 188 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P249092). 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.