BIN 08, 228

About this tablet

This is a short record of barley from the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, around the 23rd century BCE. Its findspot in southern Mesopotamia is not known, and it is now in the Yale Babylonian Collection. It lists barley deliveries or payments year by year: one large amount for a first year, then three smaller amounts grouped under a second year. It ends by saying that someone, whose name is lost, handed the barley over to another person. The tablet shows how grain obligations, perhaps rent, loan repayments or rations, were tracked over more than one year.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

For the first year: 10 gur of barley. For the second year: 5 gur of barley, then 2 gur 2 barig, and another 2 gur 2 barig. The name of the person who handed it over is broken away, but the last line says he gave the barley to him.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

Obverse(?) 1. 10 gur of barley: 2. year 1. 3. 5 gur of barley, 4. 2 gur 2 barig of barley, 5. 2 gur 2 barig, year — 6. (this is) the 2nd year. 7. x-[...] 8. he/she ga[ve] (it) to him.

Indicative reading — translated without a photograph. Generated from the transliteration alone, without examining the original. Read it as an accessible first taste, not as a verified catalogue entry.

Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

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Transliteration

1(u@c) sze gur
mu 1(disz@t)
5(asz@c) sze gur
2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) sze gur
2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) mu
mu 2(disz@t)-kam
x-[...]
in-[na]-szum2#

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BIN 08, 228. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Nies Babylonian Collection, Yale Babylonian Collection, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (P212772) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).

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