Position in chronology
MVN 03, 054
About this tablet
A short receipt from the Akkadian period, around the 23rd–22nd century BCE, recording a regular allotment of three kinds of flour. It lists the amounts of coarse barley flour, a finer flour and a small amount of top-grade flour, followed by a month name and a day count. The tablet is not provenanced and is now in the Free Library of Philadelphia. Records like this one tracked the daily food supply of a temple or palace household.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a regular allotment of flour: 15 sila (about 15 liters) of coarse barley flour, 4 sila of a finer flour and two-thirds of a sila of the best-quality flour. It is dated to the month of Gu-ra-bi-mumu, after two days of the month had passed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 15 sila of dabin-flour, 2. 4 sila of zi-gu flour, 3. 2/3 (sila) of fine flour (zi3 sig15): 4. regular allotment (sa2-du11). 5. Month: Gu-ra-bi-mumu ("the ox [...] sprouts/grows"), 6. 2 days having passed (u4 2 mu-gal2).
Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(ban2@c) 5(disz) sila3 dabin 4(disz) sila3 zi3-gu 2/3(disz) zi3 sig15 sa2-du11 iti gu4-[ra2]-bi2-mu2-mu2 2(disz@t) u4 mu-gal2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MVN 03, 054. 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: Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P215707) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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