Position in chronology
OSP 2, 021
About this tablet
A tiny accounting note from Nippur in the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), apparently tallying precious metal — most likely gold — allotted for the parts of a statue: its chest, an arm, and the right thigh. Temples commissioned cult statues and plated them with gold leaf, and the metalworkers' administration kept exact track of every shekel issued. The tablet survives only in part, but the final line gives a grand total of roughly 23 shekels (about 190 grams).
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a running account of metal for a statue. The entry for the chest piece ends with a subtotal whose figure is lost. Then 3 shekels are booked for the arm and the right thigh. The grand total at the bottom reads about one-third of a mina plus 3 shekels — some 23 shekels in all — and the commodity, now broken away, was probably gold.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [That of] the chest — total. 2. 3 shekels: 3. that of the arm and the right thigh. 4. Total: [1/3 mina] 3 [shekels of gold(?)].
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
[szu] gaba _szu-nigin2_ 3(asz@c) _gin2_ szu _a2 u3 ur2-zi-da_ _szu-nigin2_ [1/3(asz@c) _ma-na_] 3(asz@c) [_gin2 ku3-sig17?_]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 021. 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 (P216172) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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