Position in chronology
OIP 092, 0038
About this tablet
A small administrative receipt from the Persepolis Fortification archive, written in Elamite by the accounting bureaucracy of the Achaemenid Persian empire. It records that an official named Ummanunu took delivery of 140 measures of tarmu-grain (probably emmer) provided by a supplier called Babenana, and stored it, apparently at a place called Kurdušum, in year 27 — that is, of Darius I, around 495 BCE. Thousands of such tablets survive, and together they reveal the day-to-day grain economy that fed workers and officials across the Persian heartland.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: 140 measures of tarmu-grain. Supplier: Babenana. Received and put into storage by Ummanunu at Kurdušum. Filed in year 27 of the king's reign (about 495 BCE). In modern terms, this is a warehouse intake slip — the storekeeper confirming that a specific quantity of grain from a named supplier has been checked in and booked to the depot's account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine140 (measures of) tarmu-grain, supplied by (kurmin) Babenana: Ummanunu received it (and) deposited/stored it (at) Kurdušum. (In the) 27th year.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(disz) me 4(u@v) tar-mu-_mesz#_ kur-min2 ba-be-na-na um-ma-nu!-nu! du-sza2 kur-du-szu-um# ku-iz-da be-ul 2(u) 7(disz)-me-man-na
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Achaemenid (547-331 BC)) — OIP 092, 0038. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: OIM L— (PFAP, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA) — from Pārśa (mod. Persepolis) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P382724). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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.