Position in chronology
BuB 2, 02
About this tablet
This is a small receipt from Umma in southern Iraq, written during the Akkadian empire around 2300–2200 BCE. It records beer and bread handed over to Ešmelum, a royal soldier, as he arrived from Susa, the great city of Elam in southwestern Iran. It is travel provisioning, the everyday supply side of an empire. Travellers on royal business were fed from provincial stores, and this record shows a man moving between Mesopotamia and Elam at a time when Akkadian kings ruled or raided that region.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ešmelum, a soldier in the king's service, has signed for his rations on arriving from Susa. He received beer (the number of jars is lost; each jar was brewed from one barig of barley), 30 ordinary loaves baked at 30 to the ban of flour, and 3 fine loaves baked at 20 to the ban. The date line is partly broken and gives an elapsed period of some years and 3 months.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse(?) (sides are not marked in the source) 1. [n (jars) of beer, (made from) 1 barig of barley (each), gur₈]-gur₈ vessels; 2. 30 u-breads, 30 baked per 1 ban; 3. 3 first-quality breads, 20 baked per 1 ban; 4. Ešmelum, 5. soldier (literally 'man of the weapon') of the king, 6. when he came from Susa, 7. received (them). 8. [n] year(s), 3 months.
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
[n kasz sze 1(barig@c) gur8]-gur8# 3(u@c)# ninda u2 1(ban2@c) 3(u) du8 3(asz@c)# sag ninda 1(ban2@c)# 2(u) du8 esz3-me-lum lu2-tukul lugal-ka# su-sin2-ta du-ni szu ba-ti [n] mu 3(disz@t) iti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BuB 2, 02. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation (P214928) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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