Position in chronology
MVN 03, 076
About this tablet
A small bookkeeping note from Girsu, the great administrative centre of the state of Lagash in southern Iraq, written in the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) period, around 2300–2150 BCE. It lists five kinds of flour, each with its own quantity, and labels the whole as a 'regular offering', the fixed recurring allotment of food a temple or shrine received. It shows how finely Mesopotamian scribes distinguished grades and types of flour, and how routinely they tracked the daily upkeep of the gods.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Five kinds of flour make up this delivery: 3 ban of coarse barley meal, 3 ban and 5 sila of zigu-flour, 2 ban of flour for top-quality bread, 4 ban of zatum-flour, and a third of a sila of zikum-flour. The note files all of it under the regular offering, the standing allotment set aside for the gods.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 3 ban (Sargonic measure) of dabin-flour; 2. 3 ban 5 sila of zigu-flour; 3. 2 ban of flour for 'head' bread; 4. 4 ban of zatum-flour; 5. one-third (sila) of zikum-flour: 6. regular offering (sa-du).
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
3(ban2@c) dabin 3(ban2@c) 5(disz) sila3 zi3-gu 2(ban2@c) zi3 sag ninda 4(ban2@c) zi3 za-tum igi 3(disz)-gal2 zi3 zi-kum sa2-du11
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MVN 03, 076. 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 (P215728) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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