Position in chronology
OSP 2, 031
About this tablet
A small fragment of a Sargonic-period accounting tablet from Nippur, in the heartland of southern Mesopotamia, dating to around 2300 BCE. It belongs to a running tally in which numbered items — the 22nd, 23rd and 24th in a sequence, perhaps sections of a work, consignments, or rows in a larger reckoning — are each credited with a large quantity measured in 'gu2', most likely talents (a weight of about 30 kg) or loads. The surviving totals, around 630–640 units apiece, show that the whole document dealt with substantial bulk, the kind of record a central administration kept when tracking materials or labour at scale.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a slice of a longer tally. Entry number twenty-two comes to about 630 talents (part of the figure is broken away); entry twenty-three comes to 640 talents; entry twenty-four comes to 635 talents. What came before entry twenty-two and what followed entry twenty-four are not included in the piece we have, so the opening, the grand total and the purpose of the count are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Beginning not preserved in the given text) 1. The 22nd [(section), following (us2)]: 2. 630(+?) [talents (gu2)]; 3. the 23rd (section), [following]: 4. 640 talents; 5. the 24th (section), [following]: 6. 635 talents. (rest not given)
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
2(u) 2(disz)-[kam-ma us2] 1(gesz'u@c)# 3(u@c)#? [n gu2] 2(u) 3(disz)-kam-ma# [us2] 1(gesz'u@c)# 4(u@c) gu2 2(u) 4(disz)-kam-ma [us2] 1(gesz'u@c)# 3(u@c) 5(asz@c) gu2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 031. 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 (P216182) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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Related sources
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