Position in chronology
JANES 18, 48 21
About this tablet
A small receipt from Nippur, written early in the second millennium BCE, recording foodstuffs — honeyed flour and a bowl of dates — issued from the great temple of Enlil and taken in by a man named Enum-Suen, who also signs the tablet as the scribe. What lifts it above routine bookkeeping is the date formula: it is dated to the year King Iddin-Dagan of Isin gave his daughter Matum-niatum in marriage to the king of Anšan, in highland Iran. An ordinary kitchen-level disbursement thus preserves the memory of a royal diplomatic marriage that linked Mesopotamia to the Elamite east.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Received from the temple of Enlil: four liters of flour mixed with honey, and a bowl of dates. Enum-Suen took delivery and drew up the record himself. Dated to the harvest month, in the year King Iddin-Dagan married his daughter Matum-niatum to the king of Anšan.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 sila of honeyed flour, [n] sila of dates (in) a burzi-bowl — delivery; from the temple of Enlil [En]um-Suen has received. Month: Še-sag-ku (harvest month). Year: Iddin-Dagan the king — Matum-niatum, his daughter, the king of Anšan married her. Enum-Suen, the scribe.
Our translation engine — Opus 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
4(disz) sila3 zi3 lal3 sila3 bur-zi zu2-lum mu-kux(DU) e2# en-lil2-la2-ta [en]-um#-suen [szu] ba-an-ti iti sze-sag11-ku5 mu i-din-da-gan lugal-e ma#-tum-ni-a-tum dumu#-munus#-a-ni lugal an-sza-an ba-an-tuku-a en-um-suen dub-sar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Early Old Babylonian (ca. 2000-1900 BC)) — JANES 18, 48 21. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Iddin-Dagan y1 — Iddin-Dagan became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: UM 55-21-102 (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P200664). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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