Position in chronology
OSP 1, 017
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Nippur recording silver payments made for goods — including a block of lapis lazuli — and to named individuals, one of them identified as a barber (šu-i). It closes by naming the source of the silver, a 'chief merchant' (damgar-gal), and the recipient. Texts like this one, part of the Westenholz Old Sumerian and Old Akkadian Texts from Nippur corpus, give a rare glimpse into how precious materials and skilled labor were valued and exchanged in silver in one of Sumer's major cities around the mid-third millennium BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The record opens with a damaged entry for '5' of something whose description is lost, followed by a note giving its price: 1 mina and 15 shekels of silver. Next comes a block of lapis lazuli valued at 13 shekels of silver, associated with a man named Lugal-Enlil. Then 2 shekels of silver are recorded for Lu-zi, a barber. Another item (its name uncertain) is priced at two-thirds of a mina of silver. The silver came from the chief merchant, and the transaction closes with the name Šeš-gazira and the notice that the silver was handed over to him.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5(units) ... [...] (broken/illegible) its purchase price: 1 mina 15 shekels of silver. A lapis-lazuli block: 13 shekels of silver is its price. Lugal-Enlil. 2 shekels of silver: Lu-zi, the barber. [SZIMxKUSZU2 item]: 2/3 mina of silver is its price. From the chief merchant: Šeš-gazira — it was given (to him).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. 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
5(asz@c)# x x [x] nig2-sa10-be6 1(asz@c) ku3 ma-na 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) gin2-kam lagab za-gin3 1(u@c) 3(asz@c) ku3 gin2-kam lugal-en-lil2 2(asz@c)# ku3 gin2 lu2#-zi szu#-i |SZIMxKUSZU2|# ku3 2/3(asz@c@v) ma-na-kam ki dam-gar3-gal-ta# szesz-ga-zi-ra an-na-szum2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — OSP 1, 017. 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 (P221576) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.