Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 142
About this tablet
A small oval account tablet from Adab in southern Iraq, written by a temple or household scribe around 2400 BCE. It lists small issues of barley and milled flour — a gur here, a ban2 (about 10 liters) there — to a man named Ur-ni, to a party of travellers described as "the men who came from Isin," and to others whose names are now broken away. The whole account is booked to an institution called the "House of the Children" and dated to the barley-harvest month. It is a plain ration docket, but it quietly documents people moving between Sumerian cities and being fed on arrival.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Flour and barley issued: one gur of coarse barley flour to Ur-ni; two barig of barley for the group of men who arrived from Isin; ten liters of bread flour for [name lost]; then two further ten-liter allotments, one of them to a man whose name begins Ur-. These went out and were handed over to Akadu. Charged to the House of the Children, in the month of the barley harvest. Several lines in the middle of the account are broken and cannot be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gur of dabin-flour: Ur-ni. 2 barig of barley (gur-measure): they are the men who came from Isin. 1 ban2 of flour for bread — [...] ... [...] 1 ban2 [...] 1 ban2, Ur-[...] — who went out; A-KA-du (Akadu): it was given to him. (reverse) The House of the Children (e-dumu). Month: "Barley-harvest" (šesagkud).
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
1(asz@c) dabin <gur> ur2-ni 2(barig@c) sze gur lu2 isin2-ta im-gen-na-me 1(ban2@c) zi3 ninda [...] x [...] 1(ban2@c) [...] 1(ban2@c) ur2#?-[x] e3-a A-KA-du3 an-na-szum2 e2-dumu iti sze-sag11-ku5-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 142. 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 (P252764) — 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.