Position in chronology
MVN 03, 100
About this tablet
A sale record from the Sargonic (Akkadian-period) era, about 2300–2150 BCE, written in Sumerian, for the purchase of two working equids, one of them a male. It names the person who received the price, the person who weighed out the silver, and two witnesses, one of them a woman identified as someone's wife. Its closing clause sets the going exchange rate between barley and silver at the time of the sale, a small snapshot of prices in the world's first empire.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a bill of sale for two work animals, a donkey-type equid and a male equid about three years old. The price was 13 shekels of silver, together with an entry of '2 small minas' whose meaning is unclear. Nin-ura received the money as the purchase price, in a transaction that also names Gala-sipa, and Ezi weighed it out. One further line mentions barley and silver but is partly broken. Alulu and Papa, the wife of Tirku, were the witnesses. A note at the end records that at that time one shekel of silver bought 30 liters of barley.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse/Reverse (no side division marked in source): 1. 1 equid (dusu), 2. 1 male equid (dusu), 3 (years old?); 3. their silver: 13 shekels, 2 small minas. 4. Gala-sipa (or: the gala, the shepherd) — 5. Nin-ura 6. received (it) as their purchase price. 7. Ezi 8. weighed (it) out. 9. [...] barley, shekel(s) of silver. 10. 1: Alulu, 11. 1: Papa, wife of Tirku: 12. they are its witnesses. 13. At that time, barley: (for) 1 shekel of silver, 3 ban (= 30 sila) 14. was measured out.
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(asz@c) dusu2 1(asz@c) dusu2-nita2 3(disz) ku3-babbar-bi 1(u) 3(asz@c) gin2 2(asz@c) ma-na tur gala sipa nin-ur4-ra-ke4 nig2-sa10-bi-sze3 szu ba-ti e2-zi-de3 i3#-la2 [...] sze gin2 ku3 1(asz@c) a2-lu5-lu5 1(asz@c) pa4-pa4 dam tir-ku3 lu2-ki-inim-ma-bi-me u4-ba sze 1(asz@c) gin2 ku3-babbar 3(ban2@c) i3-ag2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MVN 03, 100. 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 (P215750) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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