Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 034
About this tablet
A small administrative ration tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, Iraq), dated to the Akkadian period (ca. 2334–2154 BCE). It records two commodity disbursements: pig fat issued to a donkey herder named Da-si, apparently under an official named Sarru-bani, and a second allocation of pig fat plus bitumen counted as a household ration for A-ḫu-mu-pi, the temple steward. Compact, formulaic records like this one are the everyday paperwork of Mesopotamian institutional life — the scribal equivalent of a supply-room ledger, tracking exactly who got what from the temple or palace stores.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two separate distributions are logged here. Sarru-bani's office issued 1 sila (roughly one liter) of pig fat to Da-si, who worked as a donkey herder. A second entry records that A-ḫu-mu-pi, the temple steward, received both 1 sila of pig fat and 1 unit of bitumen, the latter counted as part of his household ration allocation.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sila of pig fat — Da-si, donkey herder. Sarru-bani. 1 sila of pig fat, 1 [unit of] bitumen [as] household ration — A-ḫu-mu-pi, temple steward.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(asz@c) i3-szah2 sila3 da-si sipa ansze sar-ru-ba-ni 1(asz@c) i3-szah2 sila3 1(asz@c) esir5 e2-ba a-hu-mu-pi5 lu2 szabra e2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 034. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 163 (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, P472334). 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.