Position in chronology
MAD 4, 013
About this tablet
An Old Akkadian administrative account, probably from the 23rd century BCE, recording staples for beer-making — 'beer bread' (a baked cake of fermentable grain) and groats — issued in set quantities to named individuals, among them a cook named Ibbi-ilum. It is the everyday paperwork of a brewing or kitchen operation: who received the ingredients and how much. Such lists are a prime source for how ancient Mesopotamian institutions provisioned their staff.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a distribution list for brewing and kitchen supplies. Ḫal-ilum receives 3 barig (about 180 liters) of fine beer bread and 3 barig of fine groats; Ibbi-ilum, the cook, receives the same amounts. Situm-ki gets a much smaller share — 5 sila (about 5 liters) of fine groats — while Ama-lu-du receives 6 sila and Ama-teš an amount now lost from the tablet. The last lines are too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 3 barig of fine beer bread (bappir), 2. 3 barig of fine groats: 3. Ḫal-ilum; 4. 3 barig of fine beer bread, 5. 3 barig of fine groats: 6. Ibbi-ilum, the cook; 7. 5 sila of fine groats: 8. Situm-ki; 9. 6 sila: Ama-lu-du(?); 10. n sila: Ama-teš; 11. [...] ... 12. [...] ... [...]
Our translation engine — Fable 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
3(barig@c) bappir saga 3(barig@c) nig2-ar3-ra saga hal-i3-lum# 3(barig@c) bappir saga 3(barig@c) nig2-ar3-ra saga i-bi2-dingir muhaldim 5(disz) sila3 nig2-ar3-ra saga si-tum-ki 6(disz) sila3 ama-lu2-du10? n sila3# ama-tesz2 [...] x [...] x [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 013. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215175) — 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.