Position in chronology
BIN 08, 043
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic account tablet from southern Mesopotamia, now in the Yale Babylonian Collection, setting out goods against their value in silver: measures of barley, three named types of cloth garment (bar-dul₅, aktum, niglam), and a goat. Records like this are the raw material for the history of prices — they show a working scribe converting cloth and grain into weighed silver long before coinage existed, using minas, shekels and their fractions. One line even notes that the transaction belongs to a year for which no year-name was given, a small confession of bookkeeping untidiness. The obverse is well preserved; the reverse has been worn almost smooth.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The ledger opens with 5 gur 2 barig of barley. Then the valuations: one bar-dul₅ garment at two-thirds of a mina of silver; one aktum garment, also two-thirds of a mina; one niglam garment at half a shekel; a second niglam at a third. A further 1 gur 2 barig of barley is reckoned at 2 shekels of silver. The scribe adds that this belongs to a year with no recorded name. After that come one shekel of silver, a nanny-goat, and another two-thirds of a mina, with a note that something was brought by way of the canal; the next lines are too damaged to read. The account closes with a garment received into someone's hand.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 gur 2 barig of barley. 1 bar-dul₅ garment: it is (worth) 2/3 mina of silver. 1 aktum garment: it is (worth) 2/3 mina of silver. 1 niglam garment: it is (worth) half a shekel. 1 niglam garment: it is (worth) one-third (of a shekel). 1 gur 2 barig of barley: it is (worth) 2 shekels of silver. It is of the year that is not (recorded). 1 shekel of silver. […] 1 nanny-goat. [n] of silver, 2/3 mina. Brought (from/by way of) the canal […]. […] … brought for An (or: tin brought). 1 (item): into his hand — a … garment, gum(?), taken over.
Our translation engine — Opus 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
5(asz@c) 2(barig@c) sze gur 1(asz@c) bar-dul5 ku3 2/3(|NINDA2x(SZE.2(ASZ@c))|) ma-na-kam 1(asz@c) aktum ku3 2/3(|NINDA2x(SZE.2(ASZ@c))|) ma-na-kam 1(asz@c) nig2-lam2 bar gin2-kam 1(asz@c) nig2-lam2 igi 3(disz@t) gal2-kam 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) sze gur 2(disz@t) ku3 gin2-kam mu nu-gal2-la-kam 1(asz@c) ku3 gin2 [x] 1(asz@c) ud5# [n] ku3# 2/3(|NINDA2x(SZE.2(ASZ@c))|) ma-na i7# [(x)] de6-a [...] x an-na-de6 1(asz@c) szu-ni-ra (x) tug2 gum dab5 [(...)]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — BIN 08, 043. 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 (P212619) — 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.