Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 032
About this tablet
A brief administrative oil-disbursement record from Akkadian-period Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), dating to roughly 2300–2150 BCE. A quantity of fine oil — specifically graded as coming from Agade, the imperial capital founded by Sargon — was issued to a man named Da-kum, identified here by his kinship with another individual, Ur-Marada. The record closes with the month of the barley harvest, a standard administrative date-stamp. This is the routine paperwork of the Akkadian Empire's institutional economy: tracking named individuals as they draw quality goods from a central storehouse.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A quantity of fine-grade oil from Agade — the opening number is damaged and cannot be read — plus one container from the storehouse, was handed over to Da-kum, the brother of Ur-Marada. This is logged as an official oil expenditure. The transaction took place in the barley-harvest month.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n (units of)] sweet oil [from Aga]de — 1 [vessel?] from the storehouse — Da-kum, brother of Ur-Marada, was given to him. Oil expenditure. [Month:] [barley-har]vest.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[n i3] du10-ga# [a-ga]-de3# 1(asz@c) [esir4?] e2#-ba da-kum# szesz ur-mara2-da-ka e-na-szum2 i3 zi-ga-a [iti sze]-sag11-ku5
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 032. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 262 (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, P472332). 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.