Position in chronology
OSP 2, 114
About this tablet
A small administrative note from Nippur in the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) period, roughly 2300 BCE, recording onions issued from a temple or palace storehouse. Three men — including a doorkeeper of the storehouse and a man identified by his father's name — each receive a set quantity, and the scribe adds the period covered, the monthly rate of three ban, and a line booking a further amount as the regular offering for Ninurta, the chief god of Nippur. It is a glimpse of how even humble foodstuffs like onions were measured, rationed and accounted for month by month in a major Mesopotamian cult centre.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Onion disbursements: Ur-Ningirsu gets one lidga of onions; E-saga, the storehouse doorkeeper, gets one barig; Dudu, son of Ur-gula, gets one barig. These cover the period from the month Bara-zagar through the month Ku-šim, at a rate of three ban of onions per month. A further one lidga and one barig are set aside as the regular offering for the god Ninurta.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 lidga of onions — Ur-Ningirsu; 2. (continuation of line 1) 3. 1 barig of onions — E-saga, 4. doorkeeper of the storehouse; 5. 1 barig of onions — Dudu, 6. son of Ur-gu[la]. 7. From the month Bara-zagar 8. [to] the month Ku-šim, 9. monthly, 3 ban of onions each. 10. 1 (lidga) 1 barig: regular offering of Ninurta.
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
1(asz@c) szum2 lid2-ga ur-nin-gir2-su 1(barig@c) szum2 e2-sa6-ga i3-du2 ganun 1(barig@c) szum2 du-du dumu ur-gu2#-[la2] iti bara2-za3-gar-ta# iti ku3-szim#-[sze3] iti-da 3(ban2@c) szum2-ta 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) sa2-du11 nin-urta
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 114. 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 (P216268) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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