Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 252
About this tablet
This is a small Old Akkadian-period storeroom account from Adab (modern Bismaya), tracking two batches of raw materials — ox-hides and bitumen — held in a household or institutional store. A final entry records that twelve surplus hides were weighed out and issued to a leatherworker named Ur-a2. It is the kind of everyday inventory record that let an ancient administration keep track of craft supplies moving from storehouse to artisan's workshop, dated by the harvest month.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The storehouse holds 1 ox-hide and 20 units of bitumen on hand. It also holds 1 ox-hide and 16 units of bitumen on hand. From the surplus stock, 12 hides were weighed out and issued to Ur-a2, the leatherworker. Recorded in the harvest month.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ox-hide, 20 (units of) bitumen — for the storehouse — is on hand. 1 ox-hide, 16 (units of) bitumen — for the storehouse — is on hand. 12 hides, surplus (nig2-diri), were weighed out (disbursed). Ur-a2 — to the leatherworker — was given. Month: še-KIN-a.
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(asz@c) kusz gu4 2(u@c) esir5 e2-ba i3-gal2#-[am3] 1(asz@c)# kusz# gu4 1(u@c) 6(asz@c) esir5 e2-ba i3-gal2-am3 1(u@c) 2(asz@c)# kusz# nig2-diri ba-la2 ur-a2 aszgab-ra e-na-szum2 iti# [sze]-|SZE.SZE|#-kin-a#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 252. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 137 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472552). 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.