OIP 014, 123

About this tablet

A small beer-account from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written under the Akkadian dynasty (c. 2300 BCE). It records two issues of beer from the local brewery: twenty jars (half of good quality, half ordinary) connected with a Subarian official and delivered by a man named Ur-sa, and a single jar for another individual. Beer was the staple drink and a standard form of payment in Mesopotamia, so the brewery kept running tallies like this one of every jar that left its stores.

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

Written in modern English

Ten jars of good beer and ten jars of regular beer went to Subir-a, the gal5-la2 official; Ur-sa was the one who brought them over. One jar of regular beer went to Ur-mer-za. These are booked as outgoing stock from the brewery.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

1. 10 (jars of) fine beer, 2. 10 (jars of) ordinary beer: 3. Subir-a, the gal5-la2 officer, 4. Ur-sa6-e brought (them). 5. 1 (jar of) ordinary beer: 6. Ur-mer-za. 7. Expenditure (zi-ga) 8. (from) the brewery (e2-bappir).

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

1(u@c) kasz saga
1(u@c) kasz du
su-birx(|SZIMxNIG2|)-a szu-gal5:la2
ur-sa6-e i3-de6
1(asz@c) kasz du
ur-mer-za
zi-ga
e2-bappir

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OIP 014, 123. 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 (P215979) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).

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