Position in chronology
OSP 2, 030
About this tablet
A small administrative account from Nippur in the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, roughly 2300–2200 BCE, written in Akkadian with Sumerian logograms. It lists a series of single items — the ones that survive are wooden door bolts — and against each one a quantity of three and a half to four and a half units of something called ganūnu. It is a scrap of workshop or storehouse bookkeeping: the materials or components allotted for each piece of carpentry, probably door fittings for a building. Texts like this show how precisely even minor construction work was tallied in an early Mesopotamian city.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally of allotments, item by item. For one of the first (broken) item, four ganūnu; for the next, three and a half; for the next, four and a half; for another, four again. Then for one wooden door bolt, three and a half ganūnu, and for a second wooden bolt the amount is lost. The final line seems to have numbered the last item and marked it as second-grade or as the next in the series, but the surface is too damaged to be sure. The left side of nearly every line is broken, so what each of the first four items was cannot be recovered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[F]or 1 ... [...]: 4 ga[nūnu]; for 1 ... [...]: 3½ ga[nūnu]; for 1 ... [...]: 4½ [ganūnu]; for 1 [...]: 4 ga[nūnu]; for 1 wooden bo[lt ...]: 3½ ga[nūnu]; for 1 wooden [bolt ...]: [nth (item), second (grade) / adjoining].
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
[a]-na 1(asz@c) x [...] 4(asz@c) ga-[nu-nu] a-na 1(asz@c) x [...] 3(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) ga-[nu-nu] a-na 1(asz@c) x [...] 4(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) [ga-nu-nu] a-na 1(asz@c) [...] 4(asz@c) ga-[nu-nu] a-na 1(asz@c) _gesz-sag#-[gul_ ...] 3(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) ga-[nu-nu] a-na 1(asz@c) _gesz-[sag-gul_ ...] [n-kam-ma us2_]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 030. 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 (P216181) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.