Position in chronology
OAIC 34
About this tablet
A small administrative memorandum from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar, east of Baghdad) in the Old Akkadian period, around 2300 BCE. It lists a miscellany of goods — goat hides, flour, ghee, barley, wool and several kinds of garments — some apparently assigned to named individuals. The top of the tablet is broken, so the purpose of the list (an issue, a receipt, or an inventory) is not stated; it is the kind of everyday stock-keeping note that shows what a provincial household or institution handled in a single transaction.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The record begins mid-count: a few goat hides (at least two, the first figure is lost), a vat of flour, one item for Dingir-zamu and two for Edin-asu. Then come two measures of good ghee, a woollen guzida-cloak, thirty units of barley and four containers of flour, two long textiles, a mina of wool set aside for a belt, two šagadu-garments, one wool garment, one long garment, and two of something called ḫiḫina. No total, no date, no closing formula survives — just the inventory itself.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [n+]2 hides of young goats, 2. a namḫaru-vessel (of) flour, 3. 1 (to/for) Dingir-zamu, 4. 2 (to/for) Edin-asu, 5. 2 šakkan-measures of fine ghee, 6. a guzida-garment of wool, 7. 30 (units of) barley, 4 la'aga (of) flour, 8. 2 long (textiles), 9. 1 mina of wool for a belt, 10. 2 šagadu-garments, 11. 1 wool garment, 12. 1 long garment, 13. 2 ḫiḫina.
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
[n] 2(disz) _kusz masz2_ nam-ha-ru _dabin_ 1(disz) dingir-za-mu 2(disz) edin-a-su 2(disz) _szakkan i3-nun-du10_ _tug2 gu-zi-da siki_ 3(u) _sze_ 4(disz) _la2-a-ga2 dabin_ 2(disz) _gid2_ 1(disz) _ma#-na siki ib2-la2_ 2(disz) _tug2 sza3-ga-du3_ 1(disz) _tug2 siki_ 1(disz) _tug2 gid2_ 2(disz) _hi-hi-na_
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OAIC 34. 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 (P215906) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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