Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 033
About this tablet
An administrative disbursement tablet from Akkadian-period Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), dating to roughly 2350–2150 BCE. It records allocations of food commodities — fine oil, garlic, and pig fat — distributed to at least two named officials: a cultic functionary of the uz-ga class and a temple steward. Several lines are damaged beyond recovery, but the closing notation confirms the goods were formally handed over. Tablets like this were the everyday paperwork of Mesopotamian temple economies: precise, impersonal records ensuring that the right rations reached the right people.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A certain quantity of fine oil and garlic was allocated to Gu-zi, an official of the uz-ga rank. One liter of pig fat went to Da-di, the steward of the temple. The next lines, which probably recorded a destination or delivery route, are too damaged to read. The tablet closes with confirmation that the goods were handed over to him.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n sila3 of] fine oil; [n sila3 of] garlic — Gu-zi, the uz-ga official; 1 sila3 of pig fat — Da-[di], steward of the [temple]; [...] for/to [...]; [came / was brought ...], [...] (it) was given to him.
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] gesz szum2-ma sila3# gu-zi lu2 uz-ga 1(asz@c) i3-szah2 sila3 da#-di3 lu2 szabra e2# [x]-ga#?-sze3 [im]-szi#-gen#-na# [...] e-na-szum2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 033. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 228 (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, P472333). 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.