Position in chronology
OSP 2, 112
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Nippur in the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) period, roughly 2300–2200 BCE. It is a tally of items or persons — several names each counted once or twice — which the scribe sums up as 'the deficit', meaning what was still owed or missing from an expected total. A named official, Gal-sar, is recorded as the commissioner responsible, the sort of accountability note that let the temple or palace bureaucracy pursue outstanding obligations.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The record opens with an entry of four of something (the word is damaged), followed by a lost line. Then it lists people with counts beside their names: Ur-Inanna, one; Na-pa-lu, one; Lugal-KA, two; a man named Ur-something, one. The scribe notes that these entries make up the shortfall — the amount still outstanding. The official in charge of the matter was Gal-sar, acting as commissioner.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 4 lu [gu2(?)] 2. [...] 3. 1 Ur-Inanna 4. 1 Na-pa-lu 5. 2 Lugal-KA 6. 1 Ur-[...] 7. It is the deficit (arrears). 8. Commissioner: Gal-sar.
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(asz@c) lu [gu2] [...] 1(asz@c) ur-inanna 1(asz@c) na-pa2-lu5 2(asz@c) lugal-KA 1(asz@c) ur-[...] la2-ia3-am3 maszkim gal-sar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 112. 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 (P216266) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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