Position in chronology
MAD 5, 026
About this tablet
A small Old Akkadian administrative record from Kish in central Iraq, about the 23rd century BCE, now in the Ashmolean Museum. It lists a few small lots of sheep, mostly sent "to" an entry written KI.AN followed by a numeral. A man probably named Bubu is listed with two sheep, and a closing term seems to record that the animals were taken into someone's charge. It is a scrap of the everyday livestock bookkeeping of a major city of Sargon's empire. What KI.AN refers to cannot be settled from this short tablet.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A quick tally of sheep. The first line is broken, but an unknown number of sheep went to KI.AN 3. Five sheep went to KI.AN 7. Four more sheep are listed against a name or destination that is now lost. Two sheep are recorded for Bubu, if that reading of the name is right. The final word notes that the animals were taken into someone's charge.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n sheep] [t]o(?) KI.AN 3; 5 sheep to KI.AN 7; 4 sheep [......]; 2 sheep: Bubu(?); šu-[du8] (held in charge / taken over).
Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[n _udu_] [a]-na#? |KI.AN| 3(asz@c) 5(asz@c) _udu_ a-na |KI.AN| 7(asz@c) 4(asz@c) _udu_ [...] 2(asz@c) _udu_ bu3-bu3#? _szu-[du8_]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 5, 026. 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 (P215352) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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