Position in chronology
Adab 0874
About this tablet
A short and partly broken message or petition written in Sumerian at Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq) under the Akkadian empire, around 2200 BCE. It names Šar-kali-šarri, king of Akkad, and the two chief divine patrons of Adab: the mother goddess Dingirmah and the god Ašgi. The surviving request is simple and personal: the speaker has no irrigated farmland and asks to be given some. It is rare to see the empire's king mentioned in a small local document like this, next to an ordinary person's worry about getting land.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Igibare says: "The people of the land, loved by the goddess Dingirmah and the god Ašgi... to King Šar-kali-šarri..." The next part is lost. After a few broken lines, one of which may mention a donkey and something that was handed over, the message ends with a plain request: "I don't have any irrigated land. Please have some irrigated land given to me."
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. Igibare 2. said: 3. "The troops of the land, 4. beloved of Dingirmah, 5. beloved of Ašgi — 6. to Šar-kali-šarri Reverse (the start is broken) 7. [...] 8. [...] 9. [...] donkey(?) [...] ... [...] gave(?) 10. (I) have no irrigated land. 11. Let him give me some irrigated land!"
Our translation engine — Opus 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
igi#-bar-e na#-be2-a erin2 kalam-ma ki-ag2 dingir-mah ki-ag2 aszgi []szar#-ka3-li2-szar3#-ri2-ra [...] [...] [...] ansze#? [...] x-ka [...]-szum2 ki-duru5 nu-tuku ki-duru5 na-me ha-ma#-ab-szum2-mu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0874. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P217556) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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