Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 152
About this tablet
An administrative accounting tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), dating to the Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2100 BCE. It records workers in two named categories — leatherworkers and laborers assigned to the goddess Inanna's temple — and appears to apply simple arithmetic (multiplication using the Sumerian 'times' formula) to compute totals or ration quantities. The tablet then subdivides a larger figure ('therefrom') into the same two worker categories, suggesting a distribution or reallocation of personnel or goods. Tablets like this are the paperwork of a working temple or palace economy: personnel rolls where arithmetic and record-keeping are woven together in a single document.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with two arithmetic operations: 18 (that is, 20 minus 2) multiplied by 1, and 8 multiplied by 2. Under a heading that marks the running total of what is currently on hand, it then lists 8 leatherworkers and 6 workers of Inanna, followed by 24 of something whose label is illegible. After a marker meaning 'from this amount' or 'out of which,' the same two groups appear again — 6 workers of Inanna and 8 leatherworkers — with a final entry of 2 in a category whose name is too uncertain to render. The rest cannot be determined.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(20 minus 2), times [1] 8 times 2 [total] existing 8 leatherworkers 6 workers of Inanna 24 [x] [x] therefrom 6 workers of Inanna 8 leatherworkers 2 — mu-ni
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) a-ra2# [1(disz)] 8(asz@c) a-ra2 2(disz) nig2-gal2-la 8(asz@c) aszgab-me 6(asz@c) lu2-inanna 2(u@c) 4(asz@c) x x sza3-da 6(asz@c) lu2-inanna 8(asz@c) aszgab-me 2(asz@c) mu-ni
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 152. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 148 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472452). 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.