Position in chronology
MCS 9, 239
About this tablet
An administrative account from the city of Umma in southern Iraq, written during the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, roughly 2300–2200 BCE. A scribe records substantial outlays of barley — 560 gur in all, well over 100,000 liters — issued to named individuals including a household administrator, a lapidary (stone-cutter), and a temple dependent, under the authority of an official named Lugal-entarsu. It is a snapshot of the grain economy that underpinned the world's first territorial empire: large volumes of staple food moving through named hands, carefully totaled and signed off.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A barley disbursement ledger: 240 gur of barley, measured by the standard sag-gal measure, went to Ur-sag of Agade; 190 gur to Un-il, the estate manager; 60 gur to Tir-ku, the stone-cutter; 60 gur to Dada of the Nindara temple — this last listed as 'barley of the sagaz people'; and 10 gur to Ur-abzu, son of Suru. Altogether, 560 gur of barley by the standard measure was expended, under the responsibility of Lugal-entarsu. The date at the end — so many years and six months — is partly broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 4 gešʾu (= 240) gur of barley, (in the) sag-gal₂ (standard measure): 2. Ur-sag of Agade; 3. 3 šušana 10 (= 190) gur of barley: 4. Un-il, the household administrator (šabra); 5. 60 gur of barley: 6. Tir-ku, the lapidary (zadim); 7. 60 gur of barley: 8. Dada (of the temple of) Nindara — 9. barley of the sagaz(-people); 10. 10 gur of barley: 11. Ur-abzu, son of Suru. 12. Total: 560 gur of barley, (in the) sag-gal₂ (standard measure). 13. [Barley] booked out (expended); 14. Lugal-entarsu. 15. [n] years, 6 months.
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
4(gesz2@c)# sze gur sag#-gal2 ur-sag-a-ga-de3 3(gesz2@c)# 1(u@c)# sze gur ug3#-IL2# szabra# 1(gesz2@c) sze gur tir-ku3 zadim 1(gesz2@c) sze gur da-da nin-dar-a sze sa-gaz-ak 1(u@c) sze gur ur-abzu dumu su4-ru14 szunigin 9(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) sze# gur sag-gal2 [sze] zi-ga lugal#-en8-tar-su3 [n] mu# 6(disz@t) iti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MCS 9, 239. 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 (P215510) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.