OIP 014, 179

About this tablet

A small ration account from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq) in the Sargonic period, roughly 2300 BCE. It records beer handed out to a few named individuals and a work gang, totals the amount, converts it into the barley needed to brew it, and books the whole thing as an outlay of the 'house of the sukkal' — the office of a courier or official — in the month of the barley harvest. Dozens of such notes let us watch a provincial household's day-to-day provisioning.

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

Written in modern English

Beer issued: 1 ban and 5 sila (about 15 liters) to Lu-Enlila; 1 ban (about 10 liters) to the men of Dingir-sukal; 5 sila to Nene and Dur-lugal. That comes to one measure of beer in all, which took 2 ban (about 20 liters) of barley to brew. Charged as an expense against the sukkal's household, in the month of the barley harvest.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

1. 1 ban 5 sila of beer: 2. Lu-Enlil[a]. 3. 1 ban: (they are) the men of Dingir-sukal. 4. 5 sila: Nene, 5. Dur-lugal. 6. Total: 1 (unit) of beer; 7. its barley (equivalent): 2 ban. 8. Expenditure 9. of the house of the sukkal. 10. Month: 'Barley-harvest' (še-sag-ku).

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(ban2@c) 5(disz) sila3 kasz#
lu2-en-lil2-[la2]
1(ban2@c) lu2 dingir-su-kal-me
5(disz) sila3 ne-ne
dur2-lugal
szunigin 1(asz@c) kasz
sze-bi 2(ban2@c)
zi-ga
e2-sukkal-ge
iti sze-sag11-ku5

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OIP 014, 179. 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 (P216035) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).

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