CST 019

About this tablet

This is a short Old Akkadian ledger from Mesopotamia, written around 2300–2150 BCE. Its findspot is unknown, and it is now in the John Rylands Library in Manchester. It lists four men who each received 2 barig of sesame oil, the main cooking and lamp oil of the period. The four are grouped together as people 'of' Bad-da-elam, which could be a person, an official or a place. The last two lines are a hard-to-read note about the entry's accounting status. They seem to say that the oil should be entered on a particular tablet or account and should not be treated as a hubūtu, a term for a kind of loan.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

Sesame oil, 2 barig each, went to Si-AN-HA, Pap-gi-su4, Si-nam-ki-ri-ir and Adda-SIG-ba, who all belong to Bad-da-elam's group. The closing note says this goes on the 'mehi' tablet and is not to be counted as a hubūtu, which seems to mean a loan.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

2 barig of sesame oil: Si-AN-HA; 2 barig: Pap-gi-su4; 2 barig: Si-nam-ki-ri-ir; 2 barig: Adda-SIG-ba; (these are those) of Bad-da-elam. For the tablet of mehi (?), not hubūtu.

Indicative reading — translated without a photograph. Generated from the transliteration alone, without examining the original. Read it as an accessible first taste, not as a verified catalogue entry.

Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. 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(barig)# _gesz i3_
si-AN-HA
2(barig) pap-gi-su4
2(barig) si-nam-ki-ri-ir
2(barig) ad-da-SIG-ba
szu#?-ut#? bad3-da-elam
a-na _dub_ me-hi
la hu-bu-tu

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — CST 019. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK (P212943) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).

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