Position in chronology
OIP 092, 0401
About this tablet
A ration or disbursement memorandum from the Persepolis Fortification archive, the administrative paperwork of the Persian Empire under Darius I (around 500 BCE). Written in Elamite, it records a modest quantity of wine — roughly 16 liters — issued from the stock of a supply officer to a named recipient for some designated use, and dated by month. Thousands of such small tablets survive from Persepolis, and together they reveal how the imperial economy tracked food and drink down to the last liter.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: one marriš and six quarts of wine (about 16 liters in all), drawn from the supplies managed by Hušdanana. Bagirabba took delivery. The wine was then expended for a specific purpose — the terms used are technical and their exact meaning is unclear, perhaps a ceremony or an accounting category. The transaction is dated to the month of Samiyamaš, the eleventh month of the Persian administrative year.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 marriš (and) 6 qa of wine, supplied by (kurmin) Hušdanana. Bagirabba received (it). They used it for the abbakinnuš of the abbamuš(?). (Edge/final line:) [Month:] Samiyamaš.
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) mar-ri-isz 6(disz) _qa gesztin-mesz_ kur-min2 hu-isz-da-na-na ba-gi-rab2-ba du-sza2 ab!-ba-kin!-nu#-isz ab#-ba#-mu-isz-na# [hu]-ud-da#-[isz] []sa-mi#-ia#-masz
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Achaemenid (547-331 BC)) — OIP 092, 0401. 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, P383087). 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.