Position in chronology
MAD 5, 046
About this tablet
A small personnel roster from the city of Kish in the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), the age of the empire of Sargon of Akkad. A scribe lists a handful of able-bodied workmen by name and parentage — two of them sons of a man called Ilī-sāliq — and totals them as three men on the regular roll. It is a tiny slice of labor administration: the state or an estate keeping track of exactly who owed work, down to the individual name.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A head-count of workers: one man named Ikulum, one named Sumnum — these two being sons of Ilī-sāliq — and one named Ilum-kalī, son of a man whose name is broken away, who is attached to (or works alongside) Ilī-sāliq. The clerk then totals the list: three able-bodied men, classed as zabi'u-workers on the permanent, regular roster. A routine piece of workforce bookkeeping from an Old Akkadian administrative office at Kish.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (worker): Ikulum, 1 (worker): Sumnum, — 2: son(s) of Ilī-sāliq — 1 (worker): Ilum-kalī, son of Ku-[...], with (ište) Ilī-sāliq. Total: 3 able-bodied men (guruš), zabi'u(-workers), regular (personnel).
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(asz@c) i-kul-um 1(asz@c) su-um-num2 2(asz@c) _dumu_ i3-li2-sa-liq 1(asz@c) dingir-ka3-li2 _dumu_ ku-[...] isz-te4 i3-li2-sa-liq _szu-nigin2_ 3(asz@c) _gurusz_ za-bi-u3 gi-nu-tum
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 5, 046. 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 (P215370) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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