Position in chronology
OAIC 28
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar in eastern Iraq), dating to the Old Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2150 BCE. It is a bare list of nine personal names — men and women with Akkadian names such as 'Eštar-is-good', 'My-god-is-strong', and 'God-is-protector' — almost certainly workers, rationed dependents, or witnesses recorded by a local administrator. No quantities or verbs survive, so we cannot say what the list was for, but it is a snapshot of the ordinary population of a provincial Akkadian city.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is simply a roster. It names nine people, one per line: someone whose name begins 'Eštar-' (the rest is lost), Ašmatum, Ilum-nāṣir, Aḫu-libūra, Eštar-damqat, Ilī-dān, Aḫa-kaspi, La-arab, and Elusa. There are no amounts, no dates, and no explanation of what the list was for — just the names of a group of people who were being counted for some administrative purpose.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. Eštar-[...] 2. Ašmatum 3. Ilum-nāṣir 4. Aḫu-libūra 5. Eštar-damqat 6. Ilī-dān 7. Aḫa-kaspi 8. La-arab 9. Elusa
Our translation engine — Fable 5.1. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
esz18-dar-[...] asz2-ma-tum dingir-na-s,i2-ir a-hu-li-bur-ra esz18-dar-dam-qa2-at i3-li2-dan a-ha-ku3-babbar la-a2-ra-ab e-lu-sa
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OAIC 28. 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 (P215900) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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