Position in chronology
OIP 014, 128
About this tablet
A small beer account from Adab in southern Iraq, written in the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), when the city was administered under the kings of Akkad. It records a few disbursements of ordinary beer — the largest, 16 units, going to a work-gang — and adds them up to a total of 19, booking them as expenditure. Beer was a staple ration for labourers, and tablets like this are the routine paperwork by which an institution kept track of what left its stores.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Sixteen units of ordinary beer were issued to the work-crew, who took delivery. A couple of further small issues of ordinary beer follow, but the recipients' names are broken away; one of them, whose name ends in -sag, took delivery of his share. Altogether nineteen units of ordinary beer were paid out and booked as expenditure. The last line is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 16 [(units of) ordinary beer] 2. the work-troop received; 3. [...] ordinary beer 4. [...]-me (?) 5. [...] ordinary beer 6. [...] 7. [...] ... [...] 8. ...-sag-e received; 9. [To]tal: 20 minus 1 (= 19) (units of) ordinary beer, 10. expended. 11. ... [...]
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) 6(asz@c) [kasz du] erin2#-e szu [ba]-ti [...] kasz du [...]-me [...] kasz du [...] [...] x [...] x x-sag-e szu [ba-ti] [szu]-nigin2# 2(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) kasz du zi-ga x [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OIP 014, 128. 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 (P215984) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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