Position in chronology
MAD 5, 052
About this tablet
A fragment of a barley account from Kish in the Old Akkadian period (roughly 2300 BCE). It lists large quantities of grain — tens of gur, each gur being some 300 liters — connected with the E-mash, most likely a goat-house or animal pen of the local administration. Though broken, it is a typical piece of the paperwork by which Mesopotamian institutions tracked grain moving between storehouses, herds, and work crews.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a page from a grain ledger. The first entry is damaged but recorded something over five gur of barley plus two and two-thirds sila. The next entry logs 44 gur, 2 barig, 1 ban, and 2 sila of barley booked to the E-mash — the goat-house. A further entry, partly broken, records 53 gur, 3 barig, and some additional sila of barley. In modern terms, these are warehouse quantities running into many thousands of liters of grain, tallied line by line against an institutional account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [...] 5(?) gur 2 2/3 [sila of barley] (in the) gur (measure), 2. 44 gur 2 barig 1 ban 2 sila of barley (in the) gur (measure), 3. for the E-mash (the goat-house); 4. 53 gur 3 barig(?) [...] 6 ... sila of [barley(?)] (in the) gur (measure).
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
[...] 5(asz@c)#? 2(disz@t) 2/3(disz) [sila3 sze] gur 4(u@c) 4(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 1(ban2@c) 2(disz@t) sila3 sze gur e2-masz-e 5(u@c) 3(asz@c) 3(barig@c)#? [...] 6(disz@t) gur8 sila3 [sze?] gur
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 5, 052. 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 (P215376) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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Related sources
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