Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 035
About this tablet
A small administrative disbursement record from the ancient city of Adab in central Iraq, written during the Akkadian Empire period (roughly 2300–2150 BCE). It logs allocations of lard — a cooking fat used as a staff ration — to two estate administrators and a junior officer, then notes a separate quantity of liquid bitumen, formally certified as a 'drawn' (i.e., officially deducted) commodity in the accounts. One of the recipients, Pu-zu-zu, bears an Akkadian name and holds a double title: he administers the institutional house and also serves as the overseer of the grain barges, a role that makes the bitumen entry especially vivid — bitumen was the standard waterproofing material for Mesopotamian river craft. The tablet closes with a month name, placing it within a regular cycle of institutional record-keeping at Adab.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The record distributes cooking fat and bitumen to several officials: the unnamed house administrator receives one measure of lard, and so does Pu-zu-zu, who doubles as both house administrator and inspector of the grain barges. A junior officer — son of A[...]-zi, whose full name is partly broken — receives five measures. A closing entry certifies that one-third of a measure of liquid bitumen has been drawn from stores and officially logged as an expenditure under that category. The whole document is dated to the month of Šu-gar.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sila3 of lard — the man (who is) the szabra of the house; 1 sila3 (for) Pu-zu-zu, the man (who is) the szabra of the house, (and) commissioner of the grain boats; 5 sila3 (for) the junior officer (lu2-banda3), son of A[...]-zi; 1/3 sila3 of bitumen — (classified as) drawn oil: such is its designation. Month: Šu-gar.
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 lu2 szabra e2 1(asz@c) pu-zu-zu lu2 szabra e2 maszkim ma2 sze 5(asz@c) sila3 lu2-banda3 dumu a#?-zi 1/3(asz@c) i3 esir5-kam i3 zi#-ga#-a mu-ni-kam# iti# szu-gar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 035. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 077 (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, P472335). 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.