Position in chronology
MRAH O.5058
About this tablet
An administrative account of baked goods from the Old Akkadian period (c. 2350–2200 BCE), recording deliveries of 'gug'-cakes — rich breads graded by the amount of flour (1 ban, 5 sila, or 1 sila) that went into each — to three institutional households, including a temple called the Emaḫ, 'Exalted House'. The tablet closes with summary totals by cake size, exactly like a modern ledger. It is a small window onto how Mesopotamian bakeries and temple kitchens kept their books.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a bakery disbursement list. The Emaḫ temple received one large cake made with a full ban (about 10 liters) of flour and three medium ones of 5 sila each. The É-GAN-IŠ household got two large cakes and one medium. A third household, É-...-za, received one large cake, one medium, 5 sila's worth of onion bread, and a small 1-sila cake. The clerk then totals everything up: four large cakes, five medium cakes, 5 sila of onion bread, and ten small cakes in all.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 gug-cake of 1 ban(?) (of flour per) sila-measure, 2. 3 gug-cakes of 5 sila (each), 3. (for) the Emaḫ (temple); 4. 2 gug-cakes of 1 ban, 5. 1 gug-cake of 5 sila, 6. (for) the household É-GAN-IŠ; 7. 1 gug-cake of 1 ban, 8. 1 gug-cake of 5 sila, 9. 5 sila of sag-šum ('onion-head') bread, 10. 1 gug-cake of 1 sila, 11. (for) the household É-...(AŠ×BAD)-za. 12. Total: 4 gug-cakes of 1 ban; 13. total: 5 gug-cakes of 5 sila; 14. total: 5 sila of sag-šum bread; 15. total: 10 gug-cakes(?) of 1 sila.
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(asz@c) ninda gug2 1(ban2)#? sila3 3(asz@c)# ninda gug2 5(disz@t)# sila3 e2-mah 2(asz@c) ninda gug2 1(ban2) 1(asz@c) ninda gug2 5(disz@t) sila3 e2-GAN2-ISZ 1(asz@c) ninda gug2 1(ban2) 1(asz@c) ninda gug2 5(disz@t) sila3 5(asz@c) sila3 ninda sag-szum2 1(asz) ninda gug2 1(disz@t) sila3 e2-|ASZxBAD|-za szunigin 4(asz@c) ninda gug2 1(ban2) szunigin 5(asz@c) ninda gug2 5(disz@t) sila3 szunigin 5(asz@c) sila3 ninda sag szum2 szunigin 1(u@c) ninda gug2#? 1(disz@t) sila3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MRAH O.5058. 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 (P452996) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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