Position in chronology
HSS 14, 028
About this tablet
A short private order-letter from Nuzi, a Hurrian-speaking town east of the Tigris (modern Yorgan Tepe, Iraq), written in Akkadian around the 14th century BCE. A person named Arrumti — quite possibly a woman of the palace household — instructs Meštu to hand over the day's fresh batch of honey and a jar of oil stored by the entrance so that messengers can carry them to her. It is a rare, vivid glimpse of household provisioning: the ancient equivalent of a note asking someone to send over the groceries.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Message for Meštu, from Arrumti: Please hand over all the honey you made today, plus the one jar of oil that's sitting in the outer room by the entrance. Give it to my people so they can bring everything to me. That's the whole letter — a quick supply order, complete in ten short lines.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineTo Meštu speak: thus (says) Arrumti: All the honey that you made today, and the 1 dallu-jar of oil that is placed in the outer room — give (them), and let them bring (them) to me.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. 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
a-na mesz-tu4 qi2-bi2-ma um-ma ar-ru-um-ti-ma _lal3-mesz_ gab2-bu-um-ma sza u2-mu-um-ma te-pu-szu! u3 _1(disz) dal i3_ sza i-na ba2-ba2-nu _gar_-nu i-din li-bi-lu-ni
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Middle Babylonian (ca. 1400-1100 BC)) — HSS 14, 028. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: IM — (cast: SM 1999.02.012) (National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq; Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) — from Gasur/Nuzi (mod. Yorgan Tepe) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P416566). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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