Position in chronology
MRAH O.5007
About this tablet
A small administrative ration list from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300–2150 BCE), recording daily allotments of bread and beer to five named individuals — among them a fowler and one man noted as sick — all working under a foreman named Ariri. It was drawn up in the harvest month, and the standard portion is five sila (roughly five liters) of bread and the same of beer per person. Tablets like this are the everyday payroll paperwork of early Mesopotamian labor management: workers were paid in food and drink, and even illness was worth recording.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
An expense sheet for a work gang during the harvest month. Puzur-Eštar got a half-sila of bread plus five sila of fine-quality provisions and a jar of beer; Ur-mega, E-geš, Lugal-matum, and the fowler Lamma-mušendu each received the standard package of five sila of bread and five sila of beer. One of the men is logged as sick. The whole group answered to a supervisor named Ariri, who signed off on the distribution.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. ½(?) sila of bread, 5 sila of fine (quality bread/flour), 2. 1 (jar of) beer: 3. (for) Puzur-Eštar. 4. 5 sila of bread, 5 sila of beer: 5. (for) Ur-mega. 6. 5 sila of bread(!), 5 sila of beer: 7. (for) E-geš. 8. 5 sila of bread, 5 sila of beer: 9. (for) Lugal-matum. 10. 5 sila of bread, 5 sila of beer: 11. (for) Lamma-mušendu (the fowler). 12. 1 sick man(!). 13. Foreman: Ariri. 14. Month: "Harvest" (še-sag-ku₅).
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
1/2(disz@c)? sila3 ninda 5(disz) sila3 saga# 1(asz@c) kasz puzur4-esz18-dar 5(disz) sila3 ninda 5(disz) sila3 kasz ur-me-ga 5(disz) sila3 ninda! 5(disz) sila3 kasz e2-gesz 5(disz) sila3 ninda 5(disz) sila3 kasz lugal-ma-tum2# 5(disz) sila3 ninda 5(disz) sila3 kasz lamma-muszen-du3 |MASZ.GAG| 1(asz@c) lu2 tu-ra-a! ugula a-ri-ri itix(|UD@sxBAD|) sze-sag11-ku5
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MRAH O.5007. 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: Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium (P453038) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.