Position in chronology
TCBI 2/1, 18
About this tablet
A barley-allotment list from the Early Dynastic period (roughly 2500 BCE), probably from Zabalam in southern Iraq. A scribe recorded standard measures of grain — one gur each, and one gur plus a barig in one case — assigned to eight named individuals, most of them women, judging by the recurring 'Nin-' and 'Ama-' name elements. After a break the list resumes with an overseer (nu-banda) and a further name, Mi-na-ni. It is ordinary institutional bookkeeping: the kind of ration or rented-land record that made a temple or estate household run.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley allotments: one gur to Gan-saman; one gur and one barig to Nin-DU; one gur each to Ama-tir, Ama-ki, Ama-da, Nin-naga, Maš-tur and Nin-muda. The middle of the list is broken away. What survives after the gap names an overseer, with the amount lost, and one more recipient, Mi-na-ni. The reverse of the tablet carries no legible writing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gur of barley — Gan-saman(x); 1 gur 1 barig — Nin-DU; 1 gur — Ama-tir; 1 gur — Ama-ki; 1 gur — Ama-da; 1 gur — Nin-naga; 1 gur — Maš-tur; 1 gur — Nin-muda; (Break) [... the] overseer (nu-banda); [...] Mi-na-ni.
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(asz@c) sze gur gan-samanx(|SZE.NUN.SZE3.BU|) 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) nin-DU 1(asz@c) ama-tir 1(asz@c) ama-ki 1(asz@c) ama-da# 1(asz@c) nin-na-ga 1(asz@c) masz-tur 1(asz@c) nin-mu-da [...] [x nu]-banda3 [x] mi-na-ni
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC) ?) — TCBI 2/1, 18. 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: Banca d'Italia, Rome, Italy (P382023) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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