Position in chronology
Hebenstreit 038
About this tablet
A small administrative docket from the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, recording the issue of jars of fats and oils — sheep tallow, plain oil earmarked for two officials, and sesame oil. A man named Nam-ḫani took delivery, and the scribe booked the whole lot as an expenditure. It is a snapshot of how a Mesopotamian institution tracked its valuable fat and oil stores, jar by jar and sila by sila, over four thousand years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Issued from stores: about 2 jars holding 22 liters of good sheep fat; 2 jars with roughly 6 liters of oil for the overseer; 2 jars with 15 liters of oil for the foreman; and 5 jars with 17 liters (written '20 minus 3') of sesame oil. Nam-ḫani signed for all of it. Booked as an outgoing expense.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [2(?)] jars (containing) 22 sila of good-quality sheep fat, 2. 2 jars (containing) 6(?) sila of oil — (for/of) the overseer (nu-banda), 3. 2 jars (containing) 15 sila of oil — (for/of) the foreman (ugula), 4. 5 jars (containing) 20(?) less 3 sila of sesame oil: 5. Nam-ḫani 6. received (it). 7. Expenditure.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[2(asz@c)?] dug 2(u) 2(disz) sila3 i3-udu# du10-ga 2(asz@c) dug 6(disz)? sila3 i3 nu-banda3 2(asz@c) dug 1(u) 5(disz) sila3 i3 ugula 5(asz@c) dug 2(u)#? la2 3(disz@t) sila3 i3-gesz nam-ha-ni szu ba-ti zi#-ga
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Hebenstreit 038. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: Hebenstreit, Laurent, Paris, France (P273514) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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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.