Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 115
About this tablet
An Akkadian-period administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), probably dating to around 2300–2100 BCE. It records a large institutional delivery of twisted cord or rope fiber — 2,190 units, carefully weighed at 40 talents using one-talent stone weights — handed over to a high official or temple administrator referred to as 'the lord.' The document is designated as a primary ledger entry and dated to the barley-harvest month. Tablets like this are the everyday paperwork of the Mesopotamian temple economy: every rope, textile, and commodity that moved through institutional hands was counted, weighed, and filed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a delivery record for 2,190 bundles of twisted cord with a combined weight of 40 talents, measured using one-talent stone weights as the standard. The goods were given to the lord — a senior official, likely at a temple administration. The scribe designated this as a principal document in the filing sequence and dated the transaction to the month of the barley harvest.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2,190 (bundles of) twisted cord — its weight: 40 talents; stone weight: 1 talent each. To the lord it was given. For the primary tablet. Month: še-sag₁₁-ku₅-a.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
3(gesz'u@c) 6(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) gu sa ki-la2-bi 4(u@c) gu2 na4 1(asz@c) gu2-ta en-ra an-na-szum2 dub-sag-sze3 iti sze-sag11-ku5-a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 115. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 127 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472415). 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.