OSP 1, 143

About this tablet

A small accounting tablet from Nippur in the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) period, roughly 2300–2200 BCE, reassembled from two fragments in the Pennsylvania museum. It lists quantities of an unnamed commodity distributed across three numbered locations and credited to several named individuals, one of them tied to a place called Girgilu, with an 'overseer of the house' responsible at the end. It is the everyday bookkeeping of a Mesopotamian institution — terse, formulaic, and written for colleagues who already knew what was being counted.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

Twenty at the first location, eighteen at the second, three at the third — those belong to Lugal-idmu, from Girgilu. Forty-four to Ur-ninmu, from Ab-anka. Two to U4-u4. Five to Ma-du. The household overseer was responsible for ... — the rest of the line is broken off, and the record ends there.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

1. 20 — location/plot 1, 2. 20 minus 2 (= 18) — location/plot [2], 3. 3 — location/plot 3: 4. Lugal-idmu, 5. (of/at) Girgilu. 6. 44 — Ur-ninmu, 7. (of/at) Ab-anka. 8. 2 — U4-u4. 9. 5 — Ma-du. 10. The overseer of the house(hold) [...] (rest lost)

Indicative reading — translated without a photograph. Generated from the transliteration alone, without examining the original. Read it as an accessible first taste, not as a verified catalogue entry.

Our translation engine — Fable 5.1. 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

2(u@c) ki [1(disz)]
2(u@c) la2 2(asz@c) ki# [2(disz)]
3(asz@c) ki 3(disz)
lugal-i7-mu
gir-gi4-lu2#-ki
4(u@c) 4(asz@c) ur-nin-mu2
ab-an-ka
2(asz@c) u4-u4
5(asz@c) ma-du6
ugula-e2 [...]

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 1, 143. 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 (P216149) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).

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