Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 274
About this tablet
This is a small ration or allocation tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya) dating to the Sargonic (Akkadian) period, recording distributions of dabin-flour — a coarse barley meal — to named craftsmen and officials. The recipients include the chief smith, the chief carpenter and his subordinate, several individuals by name, and the chief leatherworker together with a leatherworker named Dudu. Texts like this are the mundane backbone of Akkadian-period institutional economies: they show a workshop or temple household paying its skilled labor force in grain, ranked from senior craftsmen down to named workers.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a distribution of coarse flour (dabin) to workers: 1 gur 4 ban2 goes to the chief smith, and 2 gur 2 barig to the chief carpenter. Smaller, partly broken amounts follow for the assistant carpenter (gala-nagar) and for three individuals named Susi, Ur-edam, and Lugal-ennun. The chief leatherworker receives an amount ending in 1 sila3 (the gur-figure is broken), and finally 1 gur goes to a leatherworker named Dudu. In short: it's a payroll or ration list paying out flour to a small group of craft supervisors and workers.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gur, 4 ban2 dabin-flour — the chief smith. 2 gur, 2 barig — the chief carpenter. [n] — the gala-nagar (subordinate/attendant carpenter). [n] ban2 — Susi. [n] — Ur-edam. [n] — Lugal-ennun. [n gur], 1 sila3 — the chief leatherworker. 1 gur — Dudu, the leatherworker.
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) 4(ban2@c) dabin gur simug gal 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) nagar gal [n] gala nagar [n] n(ban2) su-si [n] ur#-e2-dam [n] lugal-en-nun [n] 1(disz) sila3 aszgab gal 1(asz@c) du-du aszgab
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 274. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 297 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472574). 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.