Position in chronology
BIN 08, 225
About this tablet
This is a short personnel list from the Old Akkadian period, about 2300–2150 BCE. It comes from an unknown site in southern Iraq and is now at Yale. It counts groups of workmen by category. The groups include ordinary labourers, soldiers or gendarmes, a group of 60 'Subarians' (people from the north, probably foreign workers or captives), a handful of men linked to the builders, and two smaller specialist groups. The total at the end matches the entries exactly, 355 men. That suggests a planned muster of workers for a state project, perhaps a construction job.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Workforce tally: 60 labourers under the son of Amar-[x]; [60] erin-da men; 150 soldiers; 60 Subarians; 5 men of the builders' group; 10 KA-ku men; and 10 nigar men. Grand total: 355 men, which the scribe writes as 'six sixties less five'.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (no reverse or edges given in the transliteration): 1. 60 workmen, 2. [......] son of Amar-[x]; 3. [60]: erin-da (men); 4. 150 soldiers (aga-us); 5. 60 Subarians; 6. 5 a-bil of the builders; 7. 10 KA-ku (men); 8. 10 nigar (men). 9. Total: 360 minus 5 (= 355) workmen.
Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(gesz2)* gurusz# x? dumu amar-x [1(gesz2)] erin-da 2(gesz2)# 3(u) aga3-us2 1(gesz2) su-birx(|SZIMxNIG2|)-a 5(disz)* a-bil szitim 1(u) KA-ku3 1(u) nigar szunigin 6(gesz2) la2 5(disz@t)? gurusz
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BIN 08, 225. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Nies Babylonian Collection, Yale Babylonian Collection, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (P212769) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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