Position in chronology
OIP 014, 148
About this tablet
A small beer-ration receipt from Adab in southern Iraq, written during the Akkadian (Sargonic) period, roughly 2300 BCE. Two officials — a messenger named Ur-gigir and an unnamed commissioner — each received a standard measure of beer, and the scribe noted the barley it took to brew it and the office (the 'house of the envoy') that paid for it. It is a scrap of everyday bureaucracy, but thousands of such notes let us reconstruct how an early empire fed and tracked its travelling agents.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One ban of beer went to Ur-gigir, the messenger, and one ban to the commissioner. That makes two ban of beer in total, which cost one ban and three and a third sila of barley to brew. The expense was booked to the messengers' office. Dated to the month of Šu-gar.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 ban (of) beer — 2. Ur-gigir, the envoy (sukkal); 3. 1 ban — the lu-maškim (commissioner). 4. Total: [2 ban of beer]; 5. its barley (equivalent): 1 ban 3 1/3 sila. 6. Expended (zi-ga) 7. by the house of the envoy (é-sukkal). 8. Month: Šu-gar.
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(ban2@c) kasz ur-gigir sukkal 1(ban2@c) lu2-maszkim szunigin# [2(ban2@c) kasz] sze-bi 1(ban2@c) 3(asz@c) 1/3(disz) sila3 zi-ga e2-sukkal-ge iti szu-gar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OIP 014, 148. 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 (P216004) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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