Position in chronology
MAD 5, 088
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, around 2300 BCE, possibly from the town at modern Umm al-Jir in Iraq. It records that a steward named Bēlī-lī took receipt of a modest sum of silver, and separately books out a large quantity of barley — 230 gur, measured by the capacity standard of Agade, the imperial capital — noted as old stock being issued. It is a glimpse of the routine bookkeeping that kept the world's first empire fed and paid.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt and disbursement note: Bēlī-lī, the steward, has received 16½ shekels of silver. Also booked out: 230 gur of barley (counted as 240 minus 10), measured by the official Agade standard — this was old barley released from storage as an expenditure.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine16 1/2 shekels of silver Bēlī-lī, the steward, received. 240 less 10 (= 230) gur of barley (in the measure) of Agade, expenditure; old barley.
Our translation engine — Fable 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
1(u@c) 6(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) _gin2 ku3-babbar_ be-li2-li2 _agrig_ im-hur 4(gesz2@c) _la2_ 1(u@c) _sze gur_ a-ga-de3 _e3-a sze libir_
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 5, 088. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P215411) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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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.
A witness to the extensive livestock administration of the Ur III state. Numerous surviving accounts let historians study deliveries, redistribution and official responsibility in unusual detail.