Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 084
About this tablet
An allocation record from a temple at Adab in southern Iraq, dating to the Akkadian period (roughly 2350–2150 BCE). The tablet distributes date palms — or palm-orchard produce — among cultic women of different ranks: a nin-dingir priestess (a high temple lady) and a senior lukur-priestess (a category of consecrated woman often compared to the later nadītu). A named administrator, Abada, appears to manage one section of the allocations. This is the kind of careful orchard-and-personnel bookkeeping that kept ancient Mesopotamian temple economies running.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet logs three batches of date-palm allocations. First, 18 date palms measured at 4 ban are assigned to a category or person called a-hu-du10, and then a second, identical batch goes to the 'junior' a-hu-du10; the running totals for both are left blank. Next, under the heading of a man or official named Abada, 7 date palms at 3 ban are earmarked for the divine lady (the nin-dingir priestess). Finally, 21 date palms are allocated to the great lukur-priestess. The subtotals were apparently never filled in, or have been lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine18 date palms, 4 ban — a-hu-du10 Subtotal: [blank] 18 date palms, 4 ban — a-hu-du10, junior Subtotal: [blank] A-ba-da: 7 date palms, 3 ban [for the] nin-dingir (divine lady / priestess) 21 date palms — great lukur-priestess
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(u@c) la2# 2(asz@c) geszimmar 4(ban2@c) a-hux(RI)-du10 szunigin# () 2(u@c) la2 2(asz@c) geszimmar 4(ban2@c) a-hux(RI)-du10 tur szunigin () a-ba-da 7(asz@c) geszimmar 3(ban2@c) nin-dingir 2(u@c) 1(asz@c) geszimmar lukur gal
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 084. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 102 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472384). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.