Position in chronology
OIP 014, 092
About this tablet
A small bookkeeping slip from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written in the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, roughly 2300 BCE. It records two grades of beer and a batch of groats (ground grain used in brewing) that were issued from a storehouse, together with the amount of barley those products were reckoned to be worth, under the responsibility of an official named Mesag. Dozens of such notes survive from Adab, showing how a central administration tracked grain as it was converted into beer and food and handed out, month by month.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Issued: 29 sila of top-quality beer, plus 1 gur, 1 ban and 2 sila of regular beer, and 2 ban of groats. In barley terms that comes to 1 barig, 1 ban and three and a half sila. The disbursement is booked under Mesag. Dated to the month Bahir(?), whose full name is not quite clear from the last line.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 3 ban less 1 sila (= 29 sila) of fine beer, 2. 1 (gur) 1 ban 2 sila of (ordinary) beer, 3. 2 ban of groats; 4. its barley (equivalent): 1 barig 1 ban 3½ sila — 5. issued (expended). 6. Mesag. 7. Month: Bahir(?) ... igi.
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
3(ban2@c) la2 1(disz) sila3 kasz saga 1(asz@c) 1(ban2@c) 2(disz) sila3 kasz 2(ban2@c) nig2-ar3-ra sze-bi 1(barig@c) 1(ban2@c) 3(asz@c) 1/2(disz) sila3 e3 me-sag2 iti# ba#-hi-ir!(NI) igi
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OIP 014, 092. 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: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P215949) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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