Position in chronology
MVN 03, 055
About this tablet
A short receipt from Girsu in southern Iraq, from the time of the Akkadian empire (roughly 2300–2150 BCE). A man named Akadu, a dependant or agent of one Šu-namugi, acknowledges receiving just under eight shekels of silver, and two witnesses are listed to make the transaction binding. The last line names a smith, Ur-li, who may be the party paying out the silver or simply the person on whose account the record was kept — a glimpse of how craftsmen and silver changed hands in everyday business.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Akadu, who works for Šu-namugi, has received 7⅔ shekels of silver (eight shekels less a third). The witnesses to the payment are Ur-Abzu and Amar-ezem. The tablet closes with the name of Ur-li, the smith, most likely the person who handed over the silver or in whose records this receipt belongs.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 8 shekels of silver minus one-third (of a shekel), 2. Akadu, 3. the man of Šu-namugi, 4. received. 5. Ur-Abzu, 6. Amar-ezem: 7. these are its witnesses. 8. Ur-li, the smith.
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
8(disz) ku3 gin2 la2 igi 3(disz)-gal2 a-ka-du3 lu2 szu-na-mu-gi4 szu ba-ti# ur-ab-zu amar-ezem lu2-ki-inim-ma-bi3-me ur-li simug
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MVN 03, 055. 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 (P215708) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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