Position in chronology
MAD 5, 038
About this tablet
A small administrative memorandum from the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, from the city of Kish in central Mesopotamia, roughly 2300 BCE. It is a running account of goods owed or in transit — textiles and silver earmarked for agricultural work — with a recurring clerk's annotation that certain items 'were not delivered'. Such delinquency notes show the bookkeeping discipline of Akkadian-period institutions: officials tracked not just what came in, but what failed to arrive, and from whose agent. The fragment names the responsible parties, including an agent of a man called Sadu-ilum.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The top of the record is lost. What survives reads like an arrears list: one consignment is flagged 'not delivered'. Then two garments, destined for someone whose name is broken, handled through the servant — the agent of Sadu-ilum — and that shipment, too, is marked 'not delivered'. Next comes an entry of so-many shekels of silver, apparently set aside for the plow-field (seed plowing), associated with a man probably named Ititi. The final lines, naming someone's son and an 'of ...' clause, are too broken to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Beginning destroyed) 1'. it was not delivered; 2'. 2 textiles, 3'. ... ... to [...], 4'. by the servant, 5'. the man of Sadu-ilum — 6'. it was not delivered; 7'. [n] shekel(s) of silver, 8'. [f]or(?) the plow-field, 9'. [I]titi(?) 10'. [...] 11'. son(?) of [...] 12'. of [...]
Our translation engine — Fable 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
[...] _nu-mu-kux(DU)_ 2(asz@c) _tug2_ x x a-na [...] in _lu2-ARAD2_ _lu2_ sa-du2-i3-lum _nu#-mu-kux(DU)#_ [n] _gin2 ku3-babbar_ [a]-na#? _GAN2-apin_ [i?]-ti#-ti [...] _dumu#?_ [...] sza [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 5, 038. 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 (P215362) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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