Position in chronology
OSP 2, 160
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) period, roughly 2300 BCE, from Nippur, the religious capital of Sumer. It records the issue of bundles of garlic — a staple seasoning and ration item — to a handful of recipients: a high priest, several named individuals, a man attached to the uzga shrine, and a soldier's dependent. The lot was debited from the stock held by an official named Lugal-nigbedu. Tablets like this show the temple-city economy tracking even humble foodstuffs with careful bookkeeping; the figures, restored, total 1,080 bundles.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Garlic disbursement. Six hundred bundles went to the en-priest. Nin-...-ga received 210, Du-du got 120, and a second Du-du, the son of Ur-gula, got 60. The man attached to the uzga shrine received 30, and Inimanizi, who serves under the gendarme Ur-..., received 60. All of this was drawn from the stock managed by Lugal-nigbedu. (The total, if the broken figure is correctly restored, comes to 1,080 bundles.)
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 600 [bundles] of garlic: 2. the en(-priest); 3. [60] + 120 + 30 (= 210): Nin-[...]-ga; 4. 120: Du-du; 5. 60: Du-du, 6. son of Ur-gula; 7. 30: the man of the uzga; 8. 60: Inim-ma-[ni]-zi, 9. the gendarme of Ur-[...]. 10. From Lugal-[nig-be-du] 11. (it) was withdrawn.
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(gesz'u@c) szum2 [sa] en [1(gesz2@c)] 2(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) nin [...]-ga 2(gesz2@c) du-du 1(gesz2@c) du-du dumu ur-gu2-la2 3(u@c) lu2 uz-ga 1(gesz2@c) inim-ma-[ni]-zi aga3-us2 ur-[...] ki lugal-[nig2-be-du10]-ta al-[zi]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 160. 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 (P216314) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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