Position in chronology
MAD 5, 061
About this tablet
A small administrative account from Kish in the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, roughly 2300–2150 BCE. It tallies baskets of dried and processed fish, a sack of flour, and a garment, assigning them to or crediting them against named individuals such as Amur-ilum. Records like this show how the Akkadian state at Kish tracked foodstuffs — including fish, a staple of Mesopotamian diets often overlooked next to grain — through named responsible officials. The tablet is badly broken at top and bottom, so the full scope of the account is lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of a delivery or ration ledger. After a lost opening, it lists several baskets of large dried fish and baskets of tigali-fish along with one garment, apparently under a man named Izani, with the goods booked to the account of Amur-ilum. A second entry records one more basket of fish and one leather sack of flour, charged to a person whose name reads something like Ersutum. The final lines mention another basket of something, but the rest of the tablet is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Beginning destroyed) 1'. [......] 2'. [...]-AN-[...] 3'. [n] basket(s) of large dried fish, 4'. [n] basket(s) of tigali-fish; 1 garment — 5'. Izani(?); 6'. in the hand of (credited to) Amur-ilum. 7'. 1 basket of fish [...], 8'. 1 agala-sack of [barley(?)]-flour — 9'. Ersutum(?). 10'. [......] 11'. [......] 12'. [...] basket(s) [...] (rest destroyed)
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
[...] [...]-AN#-[...] [...] _gurdub# ku6 had2 gal_ [...] _gurdub# ku6_ ti-ga-li2 1(asz@c) _tug2_ i3#-za-ni#? szu a-mur-dingir# 1(asz@c) _gurdub ku6_ [...] 1(asz@c) _a-ga2:la2 zi3-[sze?_] er3#-su-tum#? [...] [...] [...] _gurdub_ [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 5, 061. 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 (P215384) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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