Position in chronology
MAD 5, 070
About this tablet
An everyday accounting record from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), possibly from the small Mesopotamian town at modern Umm al-Jir. It tracks disbursements of barley — the staple grain and effective currency of the age — to four named individuals, one of them a city elder, with a running total of 12 gur (roughly 2,900 liters). The grain belonged to one man, Išmā-Eštar, and was handed out by another, Bēlīlī: a snapshot of how private stores of grain moved through named, accountable hands in one of the world's first territorial empires.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Imī-Ea received 2 gur of barley by the standard measure. Imī-[...] (the rest of his name is broken) received 3 gur. Ilī-aḫī, the city elder, received 6 gur. Ea-rīzi got 1 gur. Total: 12 gur of barley — about 2,900 liters. The barley belonged to Išmā-Eštar, and Bēlīlī was the one who handed it out. A simple distribution ledger: who got how much, whose grain it was, and who did the giving.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2 (gur) of barley (in the) sag-gal₂ (measure): 2. Imī-Ea 3. received. 4. 3 (gur): Imī-[...] 5. received. 6. 6 (gur) of barley (in the) sag-gal₂ (measure): 7. Ilī-aḫī, 8. the elder of the city, 9. received. 10. 1 (gur) of barley (in the) sag-gal₂ (measure): 11. Ea-rīzi. 12. Total: 12 (gur) of barley (in the) sag-gal₂ (measure). 13. Barley of Išmā-Eštar; 14. Bēlīlī 15. gave (it).
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
2(asz@c) _sze sag-gal2_ i-mi-e2-a im-hur 3(asz@c) i-mi-[...] im-hur 6(asz@c) _sze sag-gal2_ i3-li2-a-hi _abba2 iri_ im-hur 1(asz@c) _sze sag-gal2_ e2-a-ri2-zi szunigin 1(u@c) 2(asz@c) _sze sag-gal2_ _sze_ isz-ma2-esz18-dar be-li2-li2 i-di3-na#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 5, 070. 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 (P215393) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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