Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 098
About this tablet
A small ration docket from Adab in southern Iraq, written roughly 2400 BCE. In five short entries a scribe records loaves of bread — and in three cases jars, presumably of beer — issued to five households or persons: the 'House of the Children,' the house of a gudu-priest, two named individuals, and the house of Nin-mug. The tally is closed with a date: the twenty-first day of the harvest month. This is the ordinary bookkeeping of an Early Dynastic institution feeding its dependents, and the pierced, pillow-shaped tablet was likely strung and filed with others like it.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Bread and beer issued today: 120 loaves to the Children's House; 180 loaves and 3 jars to the house of the gudu-priest; 120 loaves and 2 jars to Igi-si's household; 120 loaves and 2 jars to Ur-nu; 60 loaves to the house of Nin-mug. Recorded on the twenty-first day of the barley-harvest month. The date line is partly broken, so the day number is not entirely secure.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine120 loaves of bread — (for) the House of the Children (e₂-dumu). 180 loaves of bread, 3 jars — (for) the House of the gudu-priest. 120 loaves of bread, 2 (jars) — (for) the house of Igi-si₄. 120 loaves of bread, 2 (jars) — (for) Ur-nu. 60 loaves of bread — (for) the house of Nin-mug. [Day 20(?)] + 1 (= the 21st day), [month] Še-sag-ku₅ (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(gesz2@c) ninda e2-dumu 3(gesz2@c) ninda 3(asz@c) dug e2-gudux(AH) 2(gesz2@c) ninda 2(asz@c)# e2 igi-si4 2(gesz2@c) ninda 2(asz@c) ur-nu 1(gesz2@c) ninda e2# nin-mug [u4 2(u@c)?] 1(disz@t)#?-kam [iti sze]-sag11-ku5-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 098. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252717) — 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.