Position in chronology
OIP 092, 0043
About this tablet
An administrative wine receipt from the Persepolis Fortification archive, written in Elamite by a clerk of the Persian imperial administration around 500 BCE, under Darius I. It records a very large delivery — 925 marriš of wine, on the order of nine thousand liters — supplied by a man named Apzizi and received by an official named Manizza, then put into storage at a place called Bairakada. Thousands of such small clay memoranda tracked food and drink moving through the heartland of the Achaemenid Empire, and together they are one of our best windows into how the Persian state actually ran its economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: 925 marriš of wine (roughly 9,000 liters). Supplier: Apzizi. Received on account by Manizza. Mitranka handled the apportionment. The wine was placed in storage at Bairakada. In modern terms, this is a warehouse intake slip — who sent the goods, who signed for them, who processed them, and where they ended up.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine9 hundred (and) 25 marriš of wine, supplied by (kurmin) Apzizi, Manizza received (dušda) on account (ukku). Mitranka (was) the šarara (the one who apportioned/handled it). At Bairakada it was deposited (kutka).
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
9(disz@v) _me_ 2(u) 5(disz) mar-ri-isz _gesztin-mesz_ kur-min2 ap-zi2-zi2-na uk-ku ma-ni-iz-za du-isz-da mi-ut-ra-an-ka4 sza2-ra-ra ba-isz-ra-ka4-da ku-ut!-ka4
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Achaemenid (547-331 BC)) — OIP 092, 0043. 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, P382729). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.