Caption

Accounting ledger. Tablet with an account in Sumerian cuneiform describing amounts of barley. Cuneiform was written by using a pointed stylus to make impressions on clay tablets. The tablet begins with four lines stating the receipt of barley, with the total '29 gur of barley' on line 5. Line 6 states that the following amounts were expanded from the total of 29 gur. The five expenditures add up to 29, leaving a balanced account. Sumerian was the language spoken and written in the 3rd millennium BC in what is now Iraq. This tablet dates from 2200-1900 BC during the Early Bronze Age.