Position in chronology
BIN 08, 012
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic account of barley, written on a small rounded tablet now in the Yale Babylonian Collection. A large opening allotment of some seventeen gur stands under one man's name, followed by nine smaller portions — a few barig or ban here, a single gur there — issued to named individuals including a temple purification priest (gudu) and a man with a Semitic name, Ištup-il. The reverse carries the scribe's running total, 24 gur 5 ban of barley, plus two further entries. It is the ordinary bookkeeping of a mid-third-millennium household or temple estate, and the mixture of Sumerian and Semitic personal names in one ration list is a small window onto the population of early Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley disbursement, measured by the large gur standard. Ur-si: 17 gur. Šu-aš: 2 barig. E-mahda: 2 barig. U-U: 1 barig 2 ban. Ištup-il: 1 barig 3 ban. Nin-tur-tur: 1 gur. The gudu-priest of the E-mud temple: 1 gur. Du-du: 1 gur. Bara-ara-nu: 1 gur. Grand total: 24 gur 5 ban of barley, large measure. Two further entries follow on the back — one for Lu-mah, whose figure is broken away, and one for Nam-lugal-ni-du, of which only a 5 survives.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[17] gur of barley, by the large (gur-saggal) measure — Ur-si; 2 barig — Šu-aš; 2 barig — E-mahda; 1 barig 2 ban2 — U-U; 1 barig 3 ban2 — Ištup-il; 1 gur — Nin-tur-tur; 1 gur — the gudu-priest of E-mud; 1 gur — Du-du; 1 gur — Bara-ara-nu. (reverse) Total: 24 gur 5 ban2 of barley, by the large (gur-saggal) measure. [x] — Lu-mah; [n] 5 — Nam-lugal-ni-du.
Our translation engine — Opus 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)] 7(asz@c)# sze# gur saggal# ur2#-si# 2(barig@c) szu#-asz3 2(barig@c) e2-mah-da 1(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) U2-U2 1(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) isz-tup#-il 1(asz@c) nin-tur-tur 1(asz@c) gudu4# e2-mud# 1(asz@c) du-du 1(asz@c) bara2-a-ra2-nu2 szu-nigin2 2(u@c) 4(asz@c) 5(ban2) sze gur saggal [x?] lu2-mah [n?] 5(asz@c)#? nam-lugal#-ni-du10
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — BIN 08, 012. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Nies Babylonian Collection, Yale Babylonian Collection, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (P221540) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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 window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.