Position in chronology
OSP 2, 088
About this tablet
A small Old Akkadian administrative fragment from Nippur, pieced together from three broken bits in the Penn Museum. It lists large quantities of a grain-type commodity, measured in the standard capacity system, against the names of four men — Lugal-itida, Lugal-daki, Ur-kidma and An-ikuš — with a final broken line mentioning the ug-il, the low-status porters or menial labourers of the institution. It is a piece of the everyday bookkeeping by which a temple or state household in Nippur tracked grain issued to or owed by its personnel around 2300 BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The record reads as a list of grain amounts next to names. Lugal-itida is down for about 250 gur plus 1 ban and 5 sila; Lugal-daki for 52 gur and a few more sila, though the middle of that line is broken; Ur-kidma for 70 gur, 1 ban and 5 sila; and An-ikuš for a lost amount of gur plus 1 ban and 5 sila. The last preserved line mentions the porters — the menial labour force — but what was recorded for them is lost, and whatever followed is not preserved.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 250 (gur), 1 ban, 5 sila — Lugal-itida. 2. 52 (gur) [...] sila — Lugal-daki. 3. 70 (gur), 1 ban, 5 [sila] — Ur-kidma. 4. [...], 1 ban, 5 sila — An-ikuš. 5. [...] porters (ug₃-IL₂). (rest not preserved in the transliteration)
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
4(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 1(ban2@c) 5(disz) sila3 lugal-iti-da 5(u@c) 2(asz@c) [...] sila3 lugal-da-ki 1(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 1(ban2@c) 5(disz) [sila3] ur-kid2-ma [...] 1(ban2@c) 5(disz) sila3 an-i3-kusz2!(SAG@n) [...] ug3#-IL2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 088. 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 (P216242) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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