Position in chronology
HSS 10, 008
About this tablet
A short, sharp letter from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE) found at Gasur, the town in northern Iraq later known as Nuzi. A man named Ur-sa writes to a subordinate or colleague named Ilī, demanding to know why the brewer was allowed to carry off a stock of beer-bread — the fermented loaf that was the raw material of Mesopotamian beer — without Ilī saying a word. It is one of the earliest examples of everyday managerial correspondence: a supervisor scolding an employee over missing brewery supplies.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A memo of complaint: 'Message from Ur-sa — tell Ilī: What on earth were you thinking? The brewer carried off the wheat beer-bread somewhere, and you just kept quiet about it?' In modern terms, a manager is demanding an explanation from his agent for standing by while brewery stock walked out the door.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. Thus (says) 2. Ur-sa: 3. to Ilī 4. speak! 5. What did you see (i.e., what were you thinking), that 6. to where(?) the brewer 7. the beer-bread of wheat(?) 8. took ou[t, and] 9. you kept silent?
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
en#-ma ur-sa6 a-na i3-li2 qi2-bi2-ma mi-nam ta2-mu-ur-ma 'a3-i-sa _lunga#_ _bappir gig#?_ u-su-s,i#-[ma] ta2-asz2-ta2-pu#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — HSS 10, 008. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (P213274) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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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.
Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.