Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 118
About this tablet
An administrative distribution record from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), dating to the Akkadian period, roughly 2334–2154 BCE. It allocates quantities of a commodity — probably rope, fiber, or a similar bound material — to a ranked set of officials, under the authority of a nubanda, an Akkadian-period military and administrative officer. The tablet closes with a standard scribal certification: Adda the scribe is named as personally accountable for the record. Everyday paperwork like this is the bedrock of our knowledge of how Akkadian state institutions tracked resources and personnel through layers of officials.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record shows several separate allocations of rope or fiber: 120 units are listed under Ur-a, the supervising officer (nubanda). Below him, 30 units go to Ur-ašgi, described as an assigned worker; 120 units to Kin-gal; and 600 units to the chief scribe. All of this has been formally received and accounted for. Adda is the scribe who drew up the document.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine120 gu [sa] Ur-a, the nubanda; 30: Ur-ašgi, the assigned man; 120: Kin-gal; 600: the chief scribe — received / returned. Adda is the scribe.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(gesz2@c)# gu# [sa] ur-a2 nu-banda3# 3(u@c) ur-asz8-gi4 lu2 szum2 2(gesz2@c) kin-gal 1(gesz'u@c) dub-sar-mah szu-a gi4-a ad-da dub-sar-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 118. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 177 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472418). 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.