Position in chronology
OSP 1, 016
About this tablet
This small, lens-shaped clay tablet from Nippur, dating to the Early Dynastic period (roughly the mid-third millennium BCE), records a delivery of animal hides — sheepskins and a lambskin — earmarked for a shrine and for a food offering connected to the city of Adab. A man named Enlil-zi and another named Lugal-an-DU appear in the transaction, and the tablet is dated by an archaic month name, 'Bricks Placed in the Mold.' It belongs to a well-known class of Early Dynastic Nippur administrative texts tracking the flow of animal by-products (hides) through temple households.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record logs a handover of animal skins: three hides from male sheep go to the shrine, plus one more sheep hide and one lamb hide (from a still-nursing lamb). The transaction involves a man called Enlil-zi and concerns a food offering tied to the city of Adab. A second man, Lugal-an-DU, is named, and the goods were handed over to him. The document is dated to the month called 'Bricks Placed in the Mold,' one of the old Nippur calendar's month names.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 hides of a male sheep — for the shrine; 1 hide of a male sheep; 1 hide of a suckling lamb (lit. "lamb that drinks milk") — Enlil-zi; food-offering (nidba); Adab; Lugal-an-DU; was given to him; month: "Bricks Placed in the Mold" (sig4 u5-[šub-ba] gar).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
3(asz@c) kusz udu-nita esz3#-sze3 1(asz@c) kusz udu-nita 1(asz@c)# kusz# sila4 ga-nag en-lil2-zi nidba2 adab lugal-an-DU an-na-szum2# iti sig4 u5-[szub-ba] gar#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — OSP 1, 016. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P221575) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.