Position in chronology
MCS 9, 230
About this tablet
An administrative barley account from the city of Umma in southern Iraq, written under the Akkadian (Sargonic) empire, around 2300 BCE. It lists one-gur allotments of barley — measured by the capacity standard of Agade, the imperial capital — to a series of high officials: the estate administrator, the chief scribe, the land registrar, and a temple head. The total of just over 14 gur was held by storehouse personnel and marked for issue, a small but telling glimpse of how Sargonic officialdom was provisioned from central granaries.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a grain ledger. One gur of barley, measured by the official Agade standard, goes to the estate manager; one gur to the chief scribe; one gur to the land registrar; one gur to the temple administrator of a place whose name is broken away. A few entries are lost in the gap. The bottom line: 14 gur, 2 barig, and 3 ban of barley in all, by the Agade measure — barley in the hands of the storehouse staff, to be issued out to me. A final notation reads 'three years,' perhaps the period the account covers.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 gur of barley (in the measure) of Agade — 2. the household administrator (šabra); 3. 1 gur of barley — 4. the chief scribe; 5. 1 gur of barley — 6. the land registrar; 7. 1 gur of barley — 8. the temple administrator (sanga) of [...]; (Break) 9. Total: 14 gur 2 barig 3 ban of barley (in the measure) of Agade. 10. Barley of the men of the storehouse, 11. to be brought out 12. to me. 13. 3 years (?).
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(asz@c) sze gur a-ga-de3 szabra 1(asz@c) sze gur dub-sar-mah 1(asz@c) sze gur sa12-du5 1(asz@c)# sze gur sanga [...] [...] szunigin 1(u@c) 4(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) sze gur a-ga-de3 sze lu2 ganun#-ne# ga2-ra e3-e3-dam 3(disz@t) mu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MCS 9, 230. 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: World Museum Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (P215501) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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