Position in chronology
OIP 092, 0403
About this tablet
A small Achaemenid Elamite account from the Persepolis Fortification Archive — one of the roughly thirty thousand clay tablets found in the fortification wall at Persepolis, the administrative paperwork of Darius I's heartland. It records 25 BAR-measures of flour drawn from the stores of a man named Rasamadana, handled by a second man, Ammakšedda, and expended on behalf of Kurakaraš, dated to the eighteenth regnal year (about 504/503 BCE) in the month Karbašiyaš. Documents like this one, unglamorous as they are, are our best evidence for how the Persian empire actually fed its officials, workers and travellers.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Twenty-five BAR of flour — on the order of a couple of hundred liters — was issued from Rasamadana's stock. Ammakšedda took delivery of it and used it on behalf of Kurakaraš. The transaction is dated to the eighteenth year of the king's reign, in the month of Karbašiyaš. The exact purpose the flour was put to is written with terms whose meaning is no longer certain.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine25 BAR (measures) of flour, at the disposal of (kurmin of) Rasamada[na]; Ammakšedda took/received (it); he made/prepared (it) for the ... of Kurakaraš. In the 18th year, in the month Karbašiyaš.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
2(u) 5(disz) _bar zi3-da-mesz_ kur-min2 ra-sa-ma-da-<na> am-ma-ak-sze-ud-da hu-masz-sza2 ku-ra-ka4-rasz2-na hu-ut-tasz-da be-ul 1(u) 8(disz)-um-me-na _iti-mesz_ kar-ba-szi-ia-isz-ma
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Achaemenid (547-331 BC)) — OIP 092, 0403. 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, P383089). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.