Position in chronology
OIP 092, 0405
About this tablet
A small clay receipt from the great administrative archive of Persepolis, the Persian imperial capital, written in Elamite in the spring of 500 BCE — the twenty-second year of Darius I. It records about 200 liters of flour handed over by one official, Ištimanka, and received by another, Irdapuka, with a third man named as the one who works the grain and instructions that it go into a storehouse. Thousands of such tablets were found in the fortification wall at Persepolis; together they document how the Achaemenid empire fed its workers, travellers and officials through a meticulously tracked network of depots.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: twenty measures of flour (roughly two hundred liters), issued from Ištimanka's account and taken in by Irdapuka. Kurakaraš is responsible for processing it, and it is to be placed in the storehouse at Kampirriš, in Iršena's charge. Dated the first month of the year, Hadukannaš, in the twenty-second year of the king — that is, spring of 500 BCE, under Darius I.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine20 BAR of flour, supplied by Ištimanka; Irdapuka received (it). Kurakaraš is the one who processes (it); it is to be deposited in the treasury at Kampirriš, (for/by) Iršena. Month Hadukannaš (Adukanaiša), year 22.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
_2(u) bar zi3-da-mesz_ kur-min2 isz-ti-man-ka4-na ir-da-pu-ka4 du-isz-da ku-ra-ka4-rasz2 ha hu-ud-da-man-ra kam-pir2-ri-isz ka4-ap-nu-isz-ki-ma ir-sze-na da-man-na _iti-mesz_ha-du-kan2-nu-ia-isz be-ul 2(u) 2(disz)-um-me-man-na
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Achaemenid (547-331 BC)) — OIP 092, 0405. 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, P383091). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.