Position in chronology
MAD 1, 282
About this tablet
A short private letter in Old Akkadian from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar, Iraq), from the era of the Akkadian empire, c. 2300–2200 BCE. The sender, Šu-Mama, reports a small silver transaction connected with a bride or daughter-in-law: a man named Erē'um took four shekels of silver and handed it over to a woman, Kabartum. Anticipating a dispute, Šu-Mama names a person who can be seated as formal witness if the addressee denies the matter — a vivid glimpse of how ordinary people secured petty financial dealings before notaries existed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Message from Šu-Mama: regarding the daughter-in-law, Erē'um took four shekels of silver — weighed by the small mina standard — and paid it over to Kabartum. If you try to deny that this happened, then let Sirkum take his seat as witness to testify to it. In other words: the payment was made, there is someone who saw it, and any dispute can be settled formally.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. Thus (says) 2. Šu-Mama: 3. "For the daughter-in-law (é-gi₄-a) 4. 4 shekels of silver by the small mina 5. Erē'um 6. took, and 7. to Kabartum 8. he gave (it). 9. If indeed 10. you deny (it), 11. let Sirkum 12. [a]s witness (in the eldership) 13. [si]t."
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
en-ma szu-ma-ma a-na _e2-gi4-a_ 4(asz@c) _gin2 ma-na tur ku3-babbar_ er3-e-um il2-qi3-ma a-na ka3-bar-tim i-di3-in szum-ma-ma? ta2-na-kir si#-ir-kum [a]-na#? _abba2_-bu-tim [li]-szi4-ib
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 1, 282. 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 (P215111) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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.
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.