Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 320
About this tablet
This is a short administrative inventory listing quantities of tools or implements — hoes, axes, sickles, grindstones, and several items whose exact identity is now uncertain. It belongs to the broad genre of ancient Mesopotamian storeroom or workshop tallies, where scribes recorded countable objects (usually 2 or 4 of each) rather than bulk commodities like grain. Tablets like this, though small and fragmentary, are valuable because they reveal what tools institutions actually stocked and tracked in daily economic life.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a simple tally of tools or equipment. It records: 4 hoes, 4 axes, 4 of an item called 'nig2-gul' (unclear exactly what), 4 of an item called 'gi-lub' (also unclear), 4 sickles, 4 axes of a type called 'ha-zi' (the end of that word is broken off), 2 blade or tooth-tools, 2 grindstones, and 2 of something else whose sign is too damaged to read. In short, it's an inventory count of workshop or storeroom implements, most items grouped in fours or twos — the kind of routine stock-taking record kept by an ancient administrator.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 (units): al (hoe / agricultural implement) 4 (units): gin2 (axe/adze) 4 (units): nig2-gul (object/tool, meaning uncertain) 4 (units): gi-lub (object, meaning uncertain — possibly reed vessel or container) 4 (units): gur10 (sickle) 4 (units): ha-[zi] (axe-type tool, sign partly broken) 2 (units): zu2 (tooth/blade-tool) 2 (units): naga4 (grindstone/millstone) 2 (units): [x] (sign broken/illegible)
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
4(asz@c) al# 4(asz@c) gin2 4(asz@c) nig2-gul 4(asz@c) gi-lub 4(asz@c)# gur10# 4(asz@c) ha#-[zi] 2(asz@c) zu2# 2(asz@c) naga4 2(asz@c) x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 320. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 285 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from uncertain (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472620). 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.