Position in chronology
OSP 2, 163
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Nippur in the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), recording the distribution of bundles of garlic or onions to a list of named individuals, including an overseer of a household. The tablet is badly broken, so most of the recipients and quantities are lost, but the final total of fourteen units and thirty bundles, issued 'from' a person whose name begins with Nin-, survives. It is a glimpse of how everyday vegetables were counted and handed out by the temple or palace bureaucracy of Sumer.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short ration list for garlic (or onions). It names a series of people receiving bundles — Nita-edina, En-sa, an overseer of the household, E-nam, An-en-..., En-nilu, Ku-sa and others — with one entry of twenty bundles, one of one, and one of two still legible; most of the other figures are broken away. The bottom line sums it up: fourteen units of garlic, counted as thirty bundles in all, assigned under Kabku and issued from the stock of a person called Nin-... The left side of nearly every line is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. Nita-edin[a] 2. [...] En-sa 3. [...] overseer of the house(hold) 4. [...] E-nam 5. 20 bundles of garlic 6. An-en-[...] 7. [...] 1 (bundle?) [En]-nilu(?) 8. [...] Ku-sa(?) 9. [...] E-[...] 10. [...] 2 (bundles?) En-an-[...] 11. the man of AN-pa [...] 12. Total: 14 (units) of garlic, (of/for) Kabku; 30 bundles. 13. From Nin-[...].
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
nita-edin-[na] [...] en-sa6 [...] ugula-e2 [...] e2-nam 2(u) szum2 sa an-en-[...] [...] 1(disz) [en]-ni-lu2#? [...] ku3-sa#? [...] e2-[...] [...] 2(disz) en-an-[...] lu2 AN-pa [...] szunigin# 1(u@c) 4(asz@c) szum2 kab2-ku5 3(u) sa ki nin-x-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 2, 163. 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 (P216317) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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