Position in chronology
OIP 014, 180
About this tablet
A small clothing-issue record from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written in the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, around 2300 BCE. Five garments of different types — ordinary bala-cloth, a bar-dul coat, and a finer nig-lam robe — are handed out to named individuals, including a man identified as a 'Subarian' from the northern highlands, and the tablet notes that the goods were drawn from the uzga, an institutional storehouse or treasury. Such notes show how a city administration tracked textiles, one of the most valuable manufactured goods of the Bronze Age economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One bala garment to Elulu. One bala garment to KA-ku. One bar-dul coat to Nam-ḫa-se; KA-ku is the supervisor responsible for this group. One woven nig-lam robe to Martu, the man from Subartu. One garment to the supervisor Meme. All of these items were withdrawn from the uzga storehouse.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 bala-garment — 2. Elulu; 3. 1 bala-garment — 4. KA-ku; 5. 1 bar-dul-garment — 6. Nam-ḫa-se; 7. (their) overseer is KA-ku. 8. 1 nig-lam garment, weaver's (work) — 9. Martu, the Subarian; 10. 1 (garment) — the overseer Meme. 11. Taken away from the uzga-storehouse.
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(asz@c) tug2 bala e-lu-lu 1(asz@c) tug2 bala KA-ku3 1(asz@c) tug2 bar-dul5 nam-ha-se3 ugula KA-ku3-ge 1(asz@c) tug2 nig2-lam2 usz-bar mar-tu su-birx(|SZIMxNIG2|)-a 1(asz@c) ugula me-me uz-ga ba-da#-kar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OIP 014, 180. 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 (P216036) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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