Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 250
About this tablet
This is a small administrative hide-account from the Akkadian-period city of Adab. It records a batch of animal hides — from oxen, donkeys, lions, and sheep — along with a measure of lard, processed and handed over to a leatherworker named Ur-a2 for making military equipment. Texts like this offer a glimpse into how a Mesopotamian city organized the raw material supply chain for army gear: shields, armor, harness, or straps were made from tanned hide, and scribes tracked every skin that left the storehouse.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The storehouse issued a batch of hides — 2 from oxen, 7 from donkeys, 3 or more from lions, and 20 from sheep — plus 3 sila of lard, all processed and set aside as material for war gear. These hides were handed over to the leatherworker Ur-a2. The transaction was recorded in the month of Mutir.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 hides of oxen, 7 hides of donkeys, 3(+n) hides of lions, 20 hides of sheep, 3 sila of pig fat (lard) — having been processed: hides for the equipment of battle — to Ur-a2, the leatherworker, were given. Month: Mutir.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(asz@c) kusz gu4 7(asz@c) kusz ansze 3(asz@c) [n] kusz ur-mah 2(u@c) kusz# udu# 3(asz@c) i3-szah2 sila3 ab-ak kusz a2 me3-kam ur-a2 aszgab-ra e-na-szum2 iti mu-tir
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 250. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 200 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472550). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.