Position in chronology
OSP 2, 091
About this tablet
A small Sargonic-period (c. 2300 BCE) account tablet from Nippur, the religious capital of ancient Sumer. It lists six men, several of them with names beginning 'Lugal-' ('the king is ...'), each credited with a quantity of some measured commodity — almost certainly grain or flour, since the capacity measures sila and ban appear — and closes with a total that is now broken. It is the kind of routine ledger an institutional scribe drew up to track rations or deliveries; the names and the sexagesimal figures are the only parts that survive, and they tell us who was on the books of a Nippur household or temple office under the Akkadian kings.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally of amounts assigned to six individuals. Lugal-[...] gets 123 units; Lugal-ennu gets 60, with an additional amount in sila now lost; Lugal-KA (if that is his name) gets 190; A-na gets 270; Ur-kidma gets 60, plus a further 2 ban of something whose name is broken; and another Lugal-[...] gets 40. The scribe then wrote a total, but the figure is lost, and the final line is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2(gesz2) 3(disz) [= 123 (sila?)] — Lugal-[...] 2. 1(gesz2) [= 60] — Lugal-ennu, x [sila] 3. 3(gesz2) 1(u) [= 190] — Lugal-KA?(-[...]) 4. 4(gesz2) 3(u) [= 270] — A-na 5. 1(gesz2) [= 60] — Ur-kidma; 2 ban [...] 6. 4(u) [= 40] — Lugal-[...] 7. To[tal: ...] 8. [...] ... [...]
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(gesz2) 3(disz) lugal-[...] 1(gesz2) lugal-en-nu x [sila3] 3(gesz2) 1(u) lugal-KA? [...] 4(gesz2) 3(u) a2-na 1(gesz2) ur-kid2-ma 2(ban2@c) [...] 4(u) lugal#-[...] szu-[nigin2 ...] [...] x [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 091. 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 (P216245) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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