Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 234
About this tablet
This is a short Sargonic-period (Akkadian) administrative account from Adab, recording quantities of garlic or onion (szum) distributed to or under the authority of an overseer (nu-banda3) and several named individuals — Ur-Ašgi, Lugal-ezem, and Lugal-uri. The scribe totals the amounts (16 + 9 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 55) and confirms the account as reconciled with the standard closing phrase 'returned to hand,' then repeats the overseer's title to mark responsibility. It is an everyday bookkeeping tablet — the kind of small produce-ration record that kept a household or institutional economy running in third-millennium Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a small receipt or tally sheet. It lists garlic (or possibly onions) handed out under the supervision of an overseer: 16 units go to or through the overseer himself, 9 units are recorded under an entry that's hard to read clearly, and 10 units each go to three men named Ur-Ašgi, Lugal-ezem, and Lugal-uri. The scribe adds it all up to 55 units total, notes that the account has been settled ('returned to hand' — meaning received and checked off), and signs off again with the overseer's title to confirm who was responsible for the transaction.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine16 garlic(-units) — the overseer (nu-banda3). 9(?) — mu-ta(?). 10 — Ur-Ašgi. 10 — Lugal-ezem. 10 — Lugal-uri. Total: 55 garlic(-units). Returned to hand (received/accounted for). The overseer (nu-banda3).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
1(u@c)# 6(asz@c)# szum# nu-banda3 1(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) mu-ta#? 1(u@c) ur-asz8-gi4 1(u@c) lugal-ezem 1(u@c) lugal-uri3 szunigin 5(u@c) 5(asz@c) szum szu-a gi4-a nu-banda3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 234. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 001 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472534). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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.