MVN 03, 085

About this tablet

A short barley account of the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, about 2300–2150 BCE, from an unknown site in southern Iraq. It lists amounts of grain against named people: a maltster, two men identified by their fathers, and a woman identified as someone's wife. The closing line ties the grain to pigs and to feeding, so the barley was most likely issued to keep and fatten pigs. Pig-keeping is less often documented than sheep, goat or cattle husbandry, which makes the tablet a modest but useful record of how institutions spent grain on livestock.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

Fifteen gur of barley was the purchase price involving Ur-gu, the maltster. Ur-PA, son of Lugal-karra-utuku, got ten gur. Sila-ta (if that is his name), son of Zamu-sag-NI-NI, got ten gur and two barig. The wife of Lugal-uma, perhaps a woman named Irani, got four gur less one barig. The last line explains the entries: the barley was spent on feeding pigs. The number of pigs at the start of that line can no longer be read.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

1. 15 gur of barley: 2. purchase price (paid to?) Ur-gu, the maltster. 3. 10 (gur): Ur-PA, son of Lugal-karra-utuku. 4. 10 (gur) 2 barig: Sila-ta(?), 5. son of Zamu-sag-NI-NI. 6. 4 (gur) minus 1 barig: the wife 7. of Lugal-uma, 8. Irani(?). 9. [...] (They are) fattened(?) pigs, (barley) fed (to them).

Indicative reading — translated without a photograph. Generated from the transliteration alone, without examining the original. Read it as an accessible first taste, not as a verified catalogue entry.

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(u@c) 5(asz@c) sze gur
sa10 ur-gu munu4-mu2
1(u@c) ur-PA dumu lugal-kar-ra-u2-tuku
1(u@c) 2(barig@c) sila-ta
dumu za3-mu-sag-NI-NI
4(asz@c) la2 1(barig@c) dam
lugal-u3-ma
i3-ra-ni
x szah2 nig2 gu7-a-me

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MVN 03, 085. 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 (P215737) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).

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