Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 081
About this tablet
A small clay receipt from Adab (modern Bismaya) in southern Iraq, written roughly 2400 BCE. A temple household — the estate of a gudu-priest — records handing out two measures of milled barley and two of malt to a man with a Semitic name, Išme-ilum ('the god heard'), and files the transaction as an official outlay. Grain plus malt is the classic bread-and-beer pairing, so this is most likely a ration or provisioning issue. The dating by the barley-harvest month, and the Akkadian personal name inside a Sumerian document, both catch the everyday texture of Early Dynastic Adab.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Issued to Išme-ilum: two barig of groats and two barig of malt. Entered in the accounts as an expenditure of the gudu-priest's household. Dated to the month of the barley harvest.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 barig of groats (gur measure), 2 barig of malt — for Išme-ilum it was given. Booked expenditure of the house of the gudu-priest. (It is) the month of the barley harvest.
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
2(barig@c) nig2-ar3-ra gur 2(barig@c) munu4 isz-me-i3-lum an-na-szum2 nig2! zi-ga e2 gudux(AH) iti sze-gurx(|SZE&SZE.KIN|)-a-am6
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 081. 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: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P250886) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-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.