Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 103
About this tablet
A short administrative delivery record from Adab, dating to the Akkadian period (roughly 2300–2150 BCE). It logs two grades of reed bundles — large and small — brought to the city by a man named Lugal-ma-gur8, who is identified as coming from the city of Ur. The delivery is filed under a local governor named Lugal-a-mu and dated to a specific month, showing the routine bureaucratic machinery of Akkadian provincial administration at work. Reeds were indispensable in ancient southern Iraq for construction, matting, fuel, and — crucially — the cutting of cuneiform styli, which may explain why this tablet is catalogued under a 'writing' theme.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Over forty bundles of large reeds and twenty-seven (or thereabouts) of small reeds were received and recorded. They were delivered by Lugal-ma-gur8, a man from Ur. The transaction falls under the authority of Lugal-a-mu, governor, and was written up in the month of Šu-gar. The exact opening quantities are damaged and can only be partially read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[x+]42 [bundles of] large reeds; [x+]27 bundles of small reeds. Lugal-ma-gur8, man of Ur, who brought (them). Lugal-a-mu, governor. Month: Šu-gar.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[n] 4(u@c)# 2(asz@c) [n gu2] gi gal#-[gal] [n] 3(u@c) la2 3(asz@c)#? gu2 gi tur-tur lugal-ma2-gur8 lu2 uri2 mu-de6 lugal-a-mu ensi2 iti# szu#-gar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 103. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 211 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472403). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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.