OAIC 23

About this tablet

A small Old Akkadian administrative tablet from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar in the Diyala region of Iraq), written around 2300–2200 BCE. It is a ration or allotment list: six named people each receive a quantity of a commodity (almost certainly barley) measured in 'ban', followed by a second group of four names under the heading 'GI'. Lists like this were the everyday bookkeeping of a palace or temple household, recording who was fed or supplied and how much. The names mix Sumerian and Akkadian elements, a snapshot of the bilingual society of the Akkadian empire's heartland.

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

Written in modern English

This is a distribution record. Lilum gets 4 ban (roughly 40 liters), Ummani 3 ban, Eštar-imittī 4 ban, Geme-suni 5 ban, Ennanu 4 ban, and Eštar-ge6 4 ban — presumably of barley, though the tablet does not name the grain. Then comes a separate heading, 'GI', most likely reeds or a reed-based unit, under which four more people are listed without quantities: Zuzu, Bašušu, Bila, and Tabni. The tablet ends there.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

1. 4 ban: Lilum 2. 3 ban: Ummani 3. 4 ban: Eštar-imittī 4. 5 ban: Geme-suni 5. 4 ban: Ennanu 6. 4 ban: Eštar-ge6 7. GI (reed(s)?) 8. Zuzu 9. Bašušu 10. Bila 11. Tabni

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 — Fable 5.1. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

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Transliteration

4(ban2) li-lum
3(ban2) um-ma-ni
4(ban2) esz18-dar-i-mi-ti
5(ban2) geme2-su2-ni
4(ban2) en-na-nu
4(ban2) esz18-dar-ge6
gi
zu-zu
ba-szu-szu
bi2-la2
tab-ni

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OAIC 23. 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: Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P215895) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).

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