Position in chronology
OIP 014, 184
About this tablet
A small brewery or storehouse account from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, dating to the Akkadian period (about 2300 BCE). It tallies jars of beer in two grades — fine and ordinary — and two preparations, a sweetened wort-type beer and a filtered or pressed beer, with the quantities measured in jars and odd sila (roughly litre) remainders. The final line assigns the whole lot to a snake-charmer, a recognised profession in Mesopotamian temple and household life, giving a glimpse of how such specialists were provisioned from institutional stores.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a beer account. On the books are sixteen jars (short by two-thirds of a litre) of fine dida beer, twenty jars plus seven litres of fine filtered beer, sixty-seven jars of ordinary dida beer, and an unknown number of jars (short by three and a half litres) of ordinary filtered beer. A damaged line mentions some quantity of barley. Then follow about nine jars (short a litre and a half) of fine filtered beer, one jar of ordinary dida beer, and nine jars plus eight litres of ordinary filtered beer. All of this is the allotment belonging to the snake-charmer.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 16 jars less 2/3 (sila) of fine beer, dida-type; 2. 20 jars (and) 7 sila of fine beer, pressed; 3. 67 (jars) of ordinary beer, dida-type; 4. [n jars] less 3 1/2 sila of ordinary beer, pressed; 5. [...] sila of barley [...]; 6. 9(?) jars less 1 1/2 sila of fine beer, pressed; 7. 1 (jar) of ordinary beer, dida-type; 8. 9 jars (and) 8 sila of ordinary beer, [pressed]; 9. It is (the account) of the snake-charmer.
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
1(u@c) 6(asz@c) dug la2 2/3(disz) kasz saga dida 2(u@c) dug 7(disz) sila3 kasz saga sur-ra 1(gesz2@c) 7(asz@c) kasz du dida [n dug] la2 3(asz@c) 1/2(disz) sila3 kasz du sur-ra [...] sila3# sze [...] 9(asz@c)#? dug la2 1(asz@c) 1/2(disz) sila3 kasz saga# sur-ra 1(asz@c) kasz du dida 9(asz@c) dug 8(disz) sila3 kasz [du] sur-[ra] musz-lah6-am3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OIP 014, 184. 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 (P216040) — 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.