SAOC 44, 96

About this tablet

A badly broken loan contract from Nippur, in southern Iraq, drawn up during the reign of Hammurabi of Babylon (around 1790–1750 BCE). Enough survives to see the standard skeleton of ancient credit: a quantity of barley advanced, an interest clause, repayment tied to the harvest, named witnesses (including the scribe Lipit-Ištar), and a date by month and royal year-name. It is the everyday paperwork of borrowing before the harvest — a practice Hammurabi's own laws regulated.

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

Written in modern English

This is what's left of a barley loan agreement. Someone borrowed an amount of grain — the figure is broken away — apparently to be repaid at harvest time, and the deal carried interest, as such loans always did. The names of the borrower and lender are mostly lost; a name ending in '-attum' survives. The document closes in the usual way: two witnesses, Ahi-ša-gimil and the scribe Lipit-Ištar, watched the transaction. It was dated in the month of Šu-numun (early summer), in the year King Hammurabi dedicated a statue with a face of gold. The middle of the tablet is too damaged to recover the exact terms.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

(obverse) [...] ... barley(?), gur-measure(?) [...] at(?) the harvest(?) ... [It bears interest of ...] [...]-attum [...] ... has/bears [...] [...] ... [...]-tum(?) [...]-e [Before A]hi-ša-gimil (witness); before Lipit-Ištar, the scribe (witness). [Month]: Šu-numun (fourth month). [Year: Ha]mmurabi the king [... a statue(?)] whose face (was of) gold [...].

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. 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

[...] x x sze? gur#?
[...] te?-buru14?-na-na
[masz2 ...]-tuku
[...]-at-tum
[...]-tuku
[...] x
[...]-tum#?
[...]-e
[igi a]-hi-sza-gi!-mil
igi li-pi2-it-isz8-tar2 dub-sar
[iti] szu-numun-a
[mu ha]-am-mu-ra-pi2 lugal#-e [alan?] musz3#?-me-bi ku3-sig17 [...]

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Babylonian (ca. 1900-1600 BC)) — SAOC 44, 96. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Hammurabi y1 — Hammurabi became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.

Attribution

Image: IM 057987 (National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P224375). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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