Position in chronology
OSP 2, 015
About this tablet
A fragment of a personnel list from Nippur in southern Iraq, dating to the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), when the dynasty of Sargon ruled Mesopotamia. Each surviving line simply counts one man by name — a mix of Akkadian names such as Ikūnum and Bēlī-andul ('My lord is a shelter') alongside a Sumerian name beginning Lugal- — and the tablet ends with a total. It is a small piece of the bureaucratic bookkeeping by which workers or ration recipients were tallied, and the blend of names shows how Akkadian-speakers and Sumerian-speakers lived side by side in the city.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The top of the tablet is broken. What follows is a roll call: one man named Kīnum-..., one named Ḫēlī-..., one named Išar-..., one named Ikūnum, one named Bēlī-andul, one named Lugal-..., one named Išar-bēlī, one named Ti-uš-..., and one named Er-... . At the bottom the scribe sums them up: a total of ten (the number is damaged) persons, and the rest of the total line and whatever came after it are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [...] ... [...] 2. 1 Ki-num-[...] 3. 1 He-li-[...] 4. 1 I-šar-...-[...] 5. 1 I-ku-num 6. 1 Be-li-an-dul 7. 1 Lugal-[...] 8. 1 I-šar-be-[li] 9. 1 Ti-uš?-[...] 10. 1 Er-[...] 11. Total: 10? [...] 12. [...] (rest broken)
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
[...] x? ra# [...] 1(asz@c) ki2#-num2#-[...] 1(asz@c) he-li#-[...] 1(asz@c) i-szar-x [...] 1(asz@c) i-ku8-num2 1(asz@c) be-li2-an-dul3 1(asz@c) lugal-[...] 1(asz@c) i-szar-be#-[li2] 1(asz@c) ti-usz#?-[...] 1(asz@c) er3#-[...] szunigin 1(u@c)#? [...] [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 015. 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 (P216167) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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