Position in chronology
OSP 2, 105
About this tablet
A small, damaged accounting tablet from Nippur in southern Iraq, written in the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE). It lists personal names each followed by a quantity — most likely of grain, since the second line uses the ban and sila capacity measures. It is the kind of everyday ledger a temple or estate scribe kept to record what individuals received or owed; the text breaks off after the fourth name.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Zurzur: 140 units, plus 2 ban and 5 sila. Utu-gazi: 124 and two-thirds units. Nita-zi: about 10 of something, the rest is lost. Then a fourth person whose name begins Sag-... with a figure of about 30; the remainder of the line is broken away. The tablet is a running list of people and the amounts credited to or issued to each of them.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. Zurzur 2. 2(gesz2) 2(u) [= 140] (units), 2 ban 5 sila 3. Utu-gazi 4. 2(gesz2) 4(disz) 2/3 [= 124 2/3] (units) 5. Nita-zi 6. 1(u)? [= 10?] [...] 7. Sag-[...] 8. 3(u)? [= 30?] [...]
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
zur-zur 2(gesz2) 2(u) 2(ban2) 5(disz) sila3 utu-ga-zi 2(gesz2) 4(disz) 2/3(disz) nita-zi 1(u)#? [...] sag#-[...] 3(u)#? [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 105. 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 (P216259) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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