Position in chronology
OSP 2, 106
About this tablet
A fragment of a barley account from Nippur in southern Iraq, dating to the Old Akkadian period (around 2300–2200 BCE), now reassembled from two broken pieces in Philadelphia. Each surviving line pairs a quantity of grain, measured in gur, barig, ban and sila, with the name of the man who received or was charged with it — Ur-Ninildu, Ur-sa, Belili, Nirgal, Kur-mu and others. It is the ordinary bookkeeping of a city institution feeding or paying its personnel, and the kind of document from which historians reconstruct wages, ration scales and the names of ordinary workers in an age otherwise known mostly through kings.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is a list of grain allotments, each with a recipient's name. The top is broken; the first readable entry is a disbursement connected with a man called Mašda. Then: Ur-[...] gets 1 barig and about 5 sila; Ur-Ninildu gets 3 barig; Ur-sa gets 3 barig; Belili is listed next (his amount is not written or not preserved); Lugal-engar-du and Sag-[...] each get 3 barig 2 ban; Nirgal gets 1 gur 2 barig; A-ni-ta's amount is lost; an unnamed person gets 1 barig; another gets 3 barig 2 ban 4 sila; Ur-En-[...] gets 1 barig; and Kur-mu gets 1 gur 3 barig. The beginning and the ends of several lines are missing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [...] given (šum2) — Maš-da5 2. [...] 1 barig 5(?) sila — Ur-[...] 3. 3 barig — Ur-Nin-ildu 4. 3 barig — Ur-sa6 5. Be-li-li 6. 3 barig 2 ban — Lugal-[engar]-du10 7. 3 barig 2 ban — Sag-[...] 8. 1 (gur) 2 barig — Nir-gal 9. [...] — A-ni-ta 10. 1 barig — [...] 11. 3 barig 2 ban 4 sila — [...] 12. 1 barig — Ur-En-[...] 13. 1 (gur) 3 barig — Kur-mu
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
[...] szum2 masz-da5 [...] 1(barig) 5(asz@c)? sila3 ur-[...] 3(barig@c) ur-nin-ildu3 3(barig@c) ur-sa6 be6-li-li 3(barig) 2(ban2) lugal-[engar]-du10 3(barig) 2(ban2) sag-[...] 1(asz) 2(barig) nir-gal2# [...] a2-ni-ta# 1(barig@c) [...] 3(barig) 2(ban2) 4(disz) sila3 [...] 1(barig@c) ur-en-[...] 1(asz) 3(barig) kur-mu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 106. 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 (P216260) — 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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