Position in chronology
OSP 1, 126
About this tablet
A Sargonic (Old Akkadian) period account from Nippur, around 2300 BCE, listing provisions for what looks like a feast, offering, or high-status delivery: several kinds of flour earmarked for different breads, white wine, honey, pomegranates, hunting-game or leather containers of game, and strung bundles of figs, apples, and another fruit. The person or institution at the head of the list is lost. It gives an unusually concrete picture of the luxury foodstuffs that circulated through the temple city of Nippur in the age of the Akkadian empire.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a provisions list for someone whose name is broken off. It assigns 2 barig (about 120 liters) of flour each for four kinds of bread — gan-bread, sal-sal-bread, black bread, and gin-bread — plus 2 barig of ḫal-ḫal flour and 2 barig of white wine. Then one unit of something now lost and one jar of honey. After a gap, the list continues with 2 baskets of pomegranates, 2 leather bags of wild game, and ten strings each of gamur-fruit, figs, and apples. It reads like the shopping list for a banquet or an offering.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [...]-zi 2. 2 barig of flour (for) gan-bread 3. 2 barig of flour (for) sal-sal-bread 4. 2 barig of flour (for) black bread 5. 2 barig of flour (for) gin-bread 6. 2 barig of ḫal-ḫal flour 7. 2 barig of white wine 8. 1 (jar/unit) [...] 9. 1 jar of honey/syrup 10. [...] 11. 2 gurdub-baskets of pomegranates 12. 2 leather bags (kuš-lá-a) (of) wild goat/gazelle 13. 10 nig-du (strings/bundles) of gamur-fruit 14. 10 nig-du (strings/bundles) of figs 15. 10 nig-du (strings/bundles) of apples
Our translation engine — Fable 5.1. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[...]-zi 2(barig@c) zi3 ninda gan 2(barig@c) zi3 ninda sal-sal 2(barig@c) zi3 ninda ge6 2(barig@c) zi3 ninda gin2 2(barig@c) zi3 hal-hal 2(barig@c) gesztin babbar 1(asz@c) [...] 1(asz@c) lal3 dug [...] 2(asz@c) nu-ur2-ma# gurdub 2(asz@c) kusz-la2-a szeg9-masz-da3 1(u) gamurx(LAK490) nig2-du3 1(u) pesz3 nig2-du3 1(u) haszhur nig2-du3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 1, 126. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P216143) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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