Position in chronology
AuOr 09, 148 4
About this tablet
A small Old Akkadian legal tablet from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar), now in the Montserrat Museum in Barcelona. It records the price paid for a kunga — one of the prized hybrid draught equids bred in early Mesopotamia and used to pull battle-carts and ceremonial wagons — set out as a bundle of silver, barley and wool rather than a single cash sum. The lower half, where the names of the parties and witnesses stood, is badly broken, but the surviving traces preserve the tail-ends of several personal names and end with the customary note that the men listed were the town elders who stood as witnesses.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The price came to a third of a mina of silver plus five shekels, ten gur of barley, and a talent of sheep's wool — payment for one kunga-equid. The next few lines, which named the people involved, are broken; only the endings of four names survive, then a man called Mama. The list closes by noting that these were the elders, the witnesses to the sale.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1/3 (mina) of silver (and) 5 [shekels]; 2. 10 gur of barley; 3. 1 talent of sheep wool — 4. for the purchase price 5. [of 1] kunga-equid. 6. [......] 7. [......] 8. [......] 9. [......]-ne 10. [......]-nim 11. [......]-ilī 12. [......]-takuna 13. 1: Mama. 14. (These are) the elders.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1/3(asz@c) _ku3-babbar_ 5(asz@c) [_gin2_] 1(u@c) _sze gur_ 1(asz@c) _siki udu gu2_ a#-na _nig2-sa10#_ [1(asz@c) _]kunga2_ [...] [...] [...] [...]-ne# [...]-nim# [...]-i3#-li2# [...]-ta2#-ku8#-na# 1(asz@c) ma-ma _abba2-abba2#_
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — AuOr 09, 148 4. 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: Montserrat Museum, Barcelona, Spain (P212574) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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