Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 246
About this tablet
This is a small administrative receipt from Adab, dating to the Akkadian period, recording deliveries of prepared animal hides from two tanners — one a 'chief tanner' named Ur-a2, the other associated with the title 'gala.' The hides were destined for a chariot connected to a royal offering, overseen or handled by an official called An-ne-šum2. It's the kind of everyday bureaucratic memo that shows how craft materials (leather for chariot fittings) moved through temple or palace administration in one of Mesopotamia's early cities.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Twenty prepared hides were supplied by Ur-a2, the chief tanner, and twenty-one more prepared hides were supplied by the tanner known as 'Gala.' These hides were designated for a chariot connected with a royal offering, and the transaction was handled by (or given to) An-ne-šum2. The record is dated to the month of Ab-e'zigga.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine20 hides, dag-ga (soaked/prepared) — Ur-a2, the chief tanner (aszgab gal); 21 hides, dag-ga (soaked/prepared) — the gala-tanner (gala aszgab); for the chariot, the royal offering (nidba) — An-ne-šum2 (gave/received). Month: Ab-e'zi-ga.
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
2(u@c) kusz dag2-ga ur-a2 aszgab gal 2(u@c) 1(asz@c) kusz dag2-ga gala aszgab gigir2 nidba2 lugal-sze3 an-ne-szum2 iti ab-e3-zi-ga
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 246. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 100 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472546). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.