Position in chronology
OSP 1, 127
About this tablet
An administrative account from Nippur in the Early Dynastic period (mid-third millennium BCE), recording the distribution of oxen, fine aktum-cloth, and a small amount of silver among several institutional households — including the temple estate of Nisaba, goddess of writing, and an estate called the 'great hamlet.' It is the everyday ledger-keeping of Sumer's temple economy: a scribe tracking who received which goods. Tablets like this, though terse, are our main window into how wealth circulated in the earliest cities.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a distribution list. The E-duru-mah estate received one ox and four aktum garments. The house of the goddess Nisaba received one ox. The E-šita-tum received one aktum garment, and another household — its name now broken away — received one as well. A third household received a third of a shekel of silver. The final lines record a quantity of three of something and end with a word beginning 'nu-', but the rest is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ox, 4 aktum-textiles — E-duru-mah (the 'great hamlet' estate); 1 ox — the house of Nisaba (E-Nisaba); 1 aktum-textile — E-šita-[tum]; 1 [aktum-]textile — the house of [...]; 1/3 (shekel of) silver — the house of [...]; 3 [...] [...] not [...] / Nu-[...]
Our translation engine — Fable 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
1(asz@c) gu4 4(asz@c@90) tug2 aktum e2-duru5-mah 1(asz@c) gu4 e2-nisaba 1(asz@c) tug2# aktum# e2#-szita#-[tum] 1(asz@c) tug2 [aktum] e2-[...] 1/3(asz@c) ku3 e2#-[...] 3(disz@t) [...] [...] nu-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — OSP 1, 127. 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 (P221630) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.