Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 029
About this tablet
An administrative disbursement record from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), written during the Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2100 BCE. It documents the issue of woolen outer cloaks and pig fat to named institutional personnel — a temple functionary called a nu-eš, a cupbearer named Ursu, and an estate manager — supervised by a commissioner and sealed for delivery to a man named Amur-um. Routine institutional paperwork, it nevertheless preserves the actual names and job titles of real people running a temple or palace household at ancient Adab, one of the great cities of early Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two woolen cloaks were issued to the weaver, along with 2 sila of pig fat. The designated recipients were Lu-ane, a temple official, and Ursu, the cupbearer; a commissioner oversaw the whole transaction. An additional two cloaks went to the weaver, and an unspecified number more — the tablet is broken here — to the estate manager. The completed account was sealed and handed over to Amur-um. Date: the month of Šuba-nun. Classification: a garment disbursement.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 bar-dul5-cloaks — weaver; 2 sila of pig fat: Lu-ane, the nu-eš (cultic functionary), Ursu, the cupbearer — their commissioner. 2 bar-dul5-cloaks — weaver; [X] bar-dul5-cloak(s) — šabra (estate manager). Sealed account — to Amur-um he gave [it] to him. Month: Šuba-nun. It is a garment disbursement.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(asz@c) bar-dul5 usz-bar 2(asz@c) i3-szah2 sila3 lu2-an-ne2 nu-esz3 ur-su sagi maszkim-bi 2(asz@c) bar-dul5 usz-bar () bar-dul5 szabra ni#-kesz2 a#-mur#-um#-ra e-[na]-szum2 iti szubax(|MUSZ3xZA|)-nun tug2# zi-ga-am3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 029. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 026 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P472329). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.