Position in chronology
OIP 014, 153
About this tablet
An administrative record from Adab (modern Bismaya in southern Iraq), written in the Old Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2200 BCE. It is a textile account: a scribe lists garments by type and records their weight in minas and shekels of wool, with one group destined for the nin-dingir, a high-ranking priestess of the storm-god Iškur. Such tablets show how temple households tracked valuable cloth and the raw wool that went into it — textiles were a major form of wealth in early Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a wool and clothing account. It opens with a quality of wool, then lists two garments of a type now lost, whose weight is also lost, earmarked for the high priestess of the storm-god Iškur. Next comes a single bar-dul garment weighing four minas (roughly two kilograms). After a damaged line, the record closes with two bur garments weighing half a mina and five shekels together. The gaps in the tablet mean a few garment types and weights cannot be recovered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. wool, lum-lum (quality) 2. 2 garments [...] 3. their weight: [...] 4. (for) the nin-dingir priestess [of Iškur] 5. 1 bar-[dul] garment 6. its weight: 4 mi[nas] 7. [...] ... [...] 8. 2 bur garments [...] 9. their weight: ½ mina 5 [shekels]
Our translation engine — Fable 5.1. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
siki lum-lum# 2(asz@c) tug2 [...] ki-la2-bi [...] nin-dingir [iszkur] 1(asz@c) tug2 bar-[dul5] ki-la2-bi 4(asz@c) ma#-[na] [...] ni [...] 2(asz@c) tug2 bur2 [...] ki-la2-bi 1/2(asz@c) ma-na 5(asz@c) [gin2]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OIP 014, 153. 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 (P216009) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.