Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/3, pl. 245, Bod S 295
About this tablet
This small clay tablet is a routine storeroom account from the city of Umma in southern Iraq, from the Akkadian (Old Akkadian/Sargonic) period, roughly the 23rd century BCE. It lists quantities of beer-brewing ingredients — beer bread, groats, malt, ordinary flour, and fine flour — issued to or associated with a person named Mama-hursag, then totals everything in flour-equivalent using the 'Akkad' capacity standard, and closes with a date by regnal year and month. Tablets like this were the everyday bookkeeping of a temple or palace household that brewed its own beer, one of the staple products of Mesopotamian daily life; hundreds of such texts survive from Umma's administrative archives.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an inventory slip: 2 barig of beer bread from Akkad, 2 barig of groats, 2 barig of malt, 2 barig of flour, and 2 ban2 of fine flour — all issued for someone named Mama-hursag. Adding it up, the total comes to 1 gur, 3 barig, 2 ban2 of flour, reckoned by the Akkad-standard gur measure, with the 2 ban2 of fine flour noted again separately. The record is dated to year 3, month 7, by a locally used month name. It's a small, complete stock ledger — the kind of routine paperwork that tracked beer-brewing supplies moving through an administrative storehouse.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 barig beer bread (of) Akkade 2 barig groats 2 barig malt 2 barig flour 2 ban2 fine flour (for) Mama-hursag Total: 1 gur 3 barig 2 ban2 flour, by the Akkade gur-standard 2 ban2 fine flour Year 3, month 7 (ITI sign: |UDxSZE.TIL| — a locally-named month).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 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.
Engine notes
read from photo5 uncertain terms ↓
- bappir a-ga-de3 — 'Akkadian bappir' — bappir is standardly translated 'beer-bread' (a fermentation ingredient); the qualifier a-ga-de3 ('of Akkad/Akkadian') likely denotes a specific quality or recipe type. The precise distinction from other bappir types is not fully understood.
- nig2-ar3-ra — Conventionally translated 'groats' (coarsely ground grain). Some scholars render it 'flour of a specific grade'; context supports the groats reading here.
- zi3-sig15@v — 'Fine flour' or 'sifted flour'; the sign value sig15 with the @v modifier indicates a specific high-quality milled product. The exact grade and its cultic or ration use remain debated.
- ITIx(|UDxsxTIL|) — A compound month sign, one of the Akkadian-period month names at Umma. The precise month name it encodes is not universally agreed; cannot verify the exact sign cluster from the photograph at this resolution.
- 3(disz@t) mu 7(disz@g) — '3rd year, 7th month' — the regnal year is not identified with a specific king in this tablet; it would have been understood by contemporary readers from context. Cannot determine whose reign from this text alone.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows two faces of a small, well-preserved lenticular/bun-shaped tablet with clearly ruled horizontal lines. The wedge impressions are legible across most of the surface, though some signs in the lower right corner of the obverse are slightly eroded. The museum label '8295' (read as 'S 295' in the catalog) is visible on the left edge piece. On the obverse I can make out repeated sign groups consistent with capacity measures (the barig and ban notation) followed by commodity signs; the groupings align well with the transliteration's four 2-barig entries plus a 2-ban entry. The personal name Mama-ḫursag is visible as a two-line group. The reverse shows the summary line and date formula; the large numeral groups and the ITI (month) sign are discernible, consistent with the transliteration. The month sign ITIx(|UDxSTIL|) is a compound sign for a specific month name that cannot be fully resolved from the photo at this resolution. The Akkadian-period Umma provenance is consistent with the sign forms and the mention of 'Akkadian-type' bappir, which is a known commodity distinction in this corpus.
Generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 12, 2026 · 2726 in / 967 out tokens
Transliteration
2(barig@c) bappir a-ga-de3 2(barig@c) nig2-ar3-ra 2(barig@c) munu4 2(barig@c) zi3 2(ban2@c) zi3-sig15@v ma-ma-hur-sag szunigin 1(asz@c) 3(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) zi3 gur a-ga-de3 2(ban2@c) zi3-sig15@v 3(disz@t) mu 7(disz@g) ITIx(|UDxsxTIL|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — AAICAB 1/3, pl. 245, Bod S 295. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P249200) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.