Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 112
About this tablet
An Akkadian-period administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, Iraq), recording the distribution of thread or flax among a group of temple personnel. The chief lamentation priest receives the largest allocation (60 units), while five other named individuals — carefully identified by their patronymics to distinguish two men sharing the same name — receive smaller shares totaling 143 units combined. The closing formula confirms the goods were formally disbursed, giving us a precise glimpse into how a temple at Adab managed textile resources and tracked accountability among its workforce around 2350–2150 BCE. Adab was a significant Sumerian city-state, and tablets like this one document the institutional economy that underpinned its temples and their specialist personnel.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A total of 143 talents of thread were distributed among temple workers: the chief lamentation priest received 60, a man named Ulux-di-gal received 20, E2-zi received 33, and two different men both named Lugal-itida — told apart here by their fathers, Ur-ga and Utu-a — each received 10. A fifth recipient, Ur-dam, received [10], though that part of the tablet is damaged. The final lines close the account: these are the thread workers, and the goods were officially issued to them.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine60 [talents of] thread — [for the] chief lamentation priest; 20 — Ulux-di-gal; 33 — E2-zi; 10 — Lugal-itida, son of Ur-ga; 10 — Lugal-itida, son of Utu-a; [10] — Ur-dam [...]; Total: 143 [talents of] thread. [These are] the thread workers — ba-ḫa (distributed/issued?), it was given to them.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(gesz2@c) gu gu2 gala-mah 2(u@c) ulux(|GISZGALxIM|)-di-gal 3(u@c) 3(asz@c) e2-zi 1(u@c) lugal-iti-da dumu ur-ga2 1(u@c) lugal-iti-da dumu# utu#-a [1(u@c)] ur#?-dam x szunigin 2(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 3(asz@c) gu gu2 lu2 gu-me ba-ha an-na-szum2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 112. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 091 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472412). 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.