Position in chronology
BIN 08, 044
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic barley account from southern Mesopotamia, roughly the mid-third millennium BCE. It tallies grain held in two sealed storerooms belonging to a man named Šu-i, together with smaller amounts booked against four named individuals — several identified by their fathers, the standard way of pinning down a person in an ancient ledger. The whole holding is said to be in the keeping of a supervisor, Inim-zida, and the reverse closes the account with a separate receipt: Aba-Enlil, son of Amar-abzu, took delivery of 4 gur 2 barig. Ordinary institutional bookkeeping, but it shows how early scribes already combined stored capital, named debtors or holders, and a signed-off receipt on a single palm-sized tablet.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Grain account: 10 gur of barley in Šu-i's sealed store; 2 gur 2 barig charged to Igi-si; 2 gur 2 barig to Uš son of Zage; a further 3 gur in Šu-i's sealed store; 2 barig to Ur-gu son of Lugal-ennu. All of it is in Inim-zida's keeping. This is the principal stock of barley, belonging to Ur-ni. On the back: Aba-Enlil, son of Amar-abzu, has received 4 gur 2 barig of barley.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 gur of barley: the sealed storehouse of Šu-i. 2 (gur) 2 barig: Igi-si. 2 (gur) 2 barig: Uš, son of Zage. 3 (gur): the sealed storehouse of Šu-i. 2 barig: Ur-gu, son of Lugal-ennu. (All this) is held with Inim-zida. It is barley of the principal (sag); it is that of Ur-ni. (reverse) 4 gur 2 barig of barley: Aba-Enlil, son of Amar-abzu, has received.
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) sze gur e2-kiszib3 szu-i2 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) igi-si4 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) usz dumu za3-ge 3(asz@c) e2-kiszib3 szu-i2 2(barig@c) ur-gu dumu lugal-en-nu inim-zi-da an-da-gal2 sze sag-kam ur2-ni-kam 4(asz@c) 2(barig@c) sze gur a-ba-en-lil2 dumu amar-abzu szu ba-ti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — BIN 08, 044. 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 (P212620) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-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 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.