Position in chronology
MAD 5, 023
About this tablet
This is a short inventory or receipt from Kish in central Iraq, written in the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, around 2300–2200 BCE. It lists valuables: silver, a small amount of gold, a few named garments and some bronze objects. The closing line assigns the goods to people connected with a musician named Angu. It is a small sign that palace and temple musicians in the time of the Akkadian kings could be linked to real wealth. Because the beginning and one or two lines near the end are broken, we cannot tell whether these goods were paid to him, held by him or received from him.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The list opens with an amount of silver, some minas (the number is lost) plus 8 shekels. Next comes gold weighed as half a 'small' mina, minus about 4 shekels. Then there are three bala-garments, one cloak or covering, and four bronze items. After a broken line comes a name ending in '-rim'. The text closes by saying that these items are the ones belonging to, or held by, Angu the musician.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse(?) 1. [...] mina(s) (and) 8 shekels of silver; 2. 1/2 mina, 'small' (weight), less 4(?) shekels, of gold; 3. 3 bala-garments; 4. 1 dul-garment (cover/cloak); 5. 4 (items of) bronze; 6. [...] 7. [...]-rim, 8. those of Angu, the musician.
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
[...] _ma-na_ 8(disz) _gin2 ku3-babbar_ 4(asz@c)#? _gin2 la2_ 1/2(asz@c) _ma-na tur ku3-sig17_ 3(asz@c) _tug2 bala!(TI)_ 1(asz@c) _tug2 dul3_ 4(asz@c) _zabar_ [...] [...]-ri2-im szu#-ut an-gu2 nar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 5, 023. 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: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P215349) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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