Position in chronology
MAD 5, 109
About this tablet
A small accounting docket from the Old Akkadian period (ca. 2350–2200 BCE), now in the Ashmolean Museum. It records two successive deliveries of bappir — the baked malt-and-herb cakes that were the basic ingredient of Mesopotamian beer — totalling 338 units, received into a building or storage facility called the E-ur. It is a glimpse of the everyday logistics of brewing, one of the most important food industries of ancient Mesopotamia, and it shows Akkadian administrative language (ana ... īrub, 'it entered into ...') wrapped around Sumerian commodity terms.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt log for the brewery stores: a first delivery of 137 cakes of good-quality beer-bread, followed by a second delivery of 201 cakes — 338 in all. Both consignments were checked into the E-ur storehouse. In other words, two batches of brewing ingredient arrived and were booked into stock.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2 gešʾu 20 less 3 (= 137) good-quality beer-bread(s), 2. the first time; 3. 3 gešʾu 20 (and) 1 (= 201) beer-bread(s), 4. [the] second time: 5. into the E-ur ("roof-house") 6. it entered.
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(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) _la2_ 3(asz@c) _bappir# saga_ _a-ra2 1(disz@t)-kam_ 3(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 1(asz@c) _bappir_ [_a]-ra2# 2(disz@t)-kam_ a-na e2-ur3 'a3-ru-ub
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 5, 109. 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 (P215431) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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