Position in chronology
OSP 2, 053
About this tablet
A small administrative note from Nippur in the Old Akkadian period (roughly 2300–2200 BCE), now in the Penn Museum. It lists three named individuals with single-unit tallies, then records a plot of about one hectare (3 iku) of field together with its holder or name, states that a further plot belongs to a man called Adda, and closes with a verb meaning that something was set aside or left out. It is the kind of terse field-and-personnel memorandum a provincial scribe produced while sorting out who held or worked which parcels of land.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A short tally: Lugal-nidba'e, one; Nin-igara, one; E-sar, two. Then a field of three iku listed under Ati-[ḫi]; the U.ŠA plot belongs to Adda. The next line mentions the 'ka' of a dusu (perhaps a corvée-basket or pack-animal item, but the end is broken), and the final line records that this was set aside or left out of the account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [1]: Lugal-nidba'e, 2. 1: Nin-igara (the scribe wrote GA for gara₂), 3. 2: E-sar; 4. 3 iku of field: Ati-[ḫi]; 5. the U.ŠA (plot) is (that) of Adda; 6. the ka of the dusu-[...] 7. he has set (it) aside / left (it) out.
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
[1(disz)] lugal#-nidba2#-[e] 1(asz@c) nin-i3-gara2!(GA) 2(asz@c) e2-sar 3(iku@c) GAN2 a2-ti-[hi] |U.SZA| ad-da-kam# ka dusu-[...] ib2-ta-tak4
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 053. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P216207) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A witness to the extensive livestock administration of the Ur III state. Numerous surviving accounts let historians study deliveries, redistribution and official responsibility in unusual detail.