BuB 2, 12

About this tablet

A short barley account from Mesopotamia in the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) period, about 2300–2150 BCE, now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. It lists thirteen people, several of them women by their names (Nin-, Ama-), each with a quantity of barley, then gives a grand total measured in the standard 'gur sag-gal' of the Akkadian state. The tablet does not say whether the grain was issued as rations, loans or seed, and its findspot is unknown. It is an ordinary piece of the grain bookkeeping that ran the economy of the first Mesopotamian empire.

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

Written in modern English

Barley allocations: E-ni gets 3 gur; Lugal-ša 2 gur and 2 barig; Me-ur 2 gur; Nin-šu 2 barig; Ama-SAL.HUB₂ 2 barig; Ama-AB 2 barig; and Ama-SAL.HUB₂ another 1 gur. The amount for a person whose name begins with Nin- is lost. Then Bara-anne receives 2 barig and Nin-šeš probably 1 gur. A-HE₂ and E-ku receive 2 barig each, and A-NI-NI 1 gur. The account closes with a total of 11 gur of barley, measured by the standard gur-sag-gal measure.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

1. 3 gur of barley: 2. E-ni; 3. 2 gur 2 barig: Lugal-ša; 4. 2 gur: Me-ur; 5. 2 barig: Nin-šu; 6. 2 barig: Ama-SAL.HUB₂; 7. 2 barig: Ama-AB; 8. 1 gur: Ama-SAL.HUB₂; 9. Nin-[......]; 10. 2 barig: Bara-anne; 11. 1(?) gur: Nin-šeš; 12. 2 barig: A-HE₂; 13. 2 barig: E-ku; 14. 1 gur: A-NI-NI. 15. Total: 11 gur of barley, (by the) gur sag-gal.

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

3(asz@c) sze gur
e2-ni
2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) lugal-sza3
2(asz@c) me-ur4
2(barig@c) nin-szu
2(barig@c) ama-|SAL+HUB2|
2(barig@c) ama-AB
1(asz@c) ama-|SAL+HUB2|
nin# [...]
2(barig@c)# bara2#-an-ne3
1(asz@c)? nin#-szesz#
2(barig@c) a#-HE2#
2(barig@c) e2-ku3#
1(asz@c) a-NI-NI
szunigin 1(u@c) 1(asz@c) sze gur sag-gal2

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BuB 2, 12. 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: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation (P214936) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).

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