Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 290
About this tablet
This is a small Sargonic-period (Akkadian era, c. 2300–2200 BCE) personnel list from the city of Adab, part of the Carl L. Lippmann Collection now in Madrid. It records individual workers — each counted as a single unit — grouped under two overseers, one associated with the gala (lament-singer) office, and closing with a named leatherworker, Dudu. Such rosters are common in Sargonic administrative archives, tracking labor assigned to institutional households or workshops rather than recording a narrative event.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a short labor roster. It lists workers one by one — A-geštin, supervised by the foreman Ur-a; then Imta and Kar-gag, who fall under the supervision connected to the gala-priest's office; then Lugal-lu and Šeš-gula, identified as woodworkers or sawyers; and finally Dudu, a leatherworker, counted individually. Each person is tallied as '1,' suggesting this is a simple headcount or work-assignment list rather than a ration or wage record with quantities of goods.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (each): A-geštin overseer: Ur-a 1 (each): Imta 1 (each): Kar-gag overseer: (of) the gala (lament-singer) 1 (each): Lugal-lu 1 (each): Šeš-gula — woodworkers/sawyers (geš-šu-ri-ri-me) 1 (each): 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) a-gesztin ugula ur#-a2 1(asz@c) im#-ta 1(asz@c) kar-gag ugula gala 1(asz@c) lugal-lu 1(asz@c) szesz-gu-la gesz#-szu-ri-ri-me 1(asz@c) du-du aszgab
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 290. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 132 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472590). 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.