Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 040
About this tablet
An administrative disbursement record from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), dating to the Akkadian imperial period, roughly 2334–2154 BCE. The tablet tracks two small allocations of sesame oil — each measuring one sila, about a liter — sourced specifically from Agade, the imperial capital. The oil goes to named individuals: the first appears connected to the royal administration, the second to some institution whose name is now broken away. The record closes with a standard accounting formula marking the oil as 'expended' and a month-date. Such minute entries, multiplied across thousands of surviving tablets, formed the administrative backbone of the Akkadian Empire.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two people each received one sila of sesame oil that had been brought from Agade, the Akkadian capital. The first recipient, I-gaz-bara2, was a man of the king's household or administration. Several lines between the two entries are too damaged to read. The second recipient, Šu-Aštakkal, is described as belonging to some institution whose name is now broken away, and there are one or two further lines that cannot be recovered. The tablet closes with a formal note confirming that this oil has been officially drawn from stores, dated to the orchard month.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sila of sesame oil from Agade — (for) I-gaz-bara2, [man of the] king; [...] ... [...] [...] Im-ši-gen-na. 1 sila of sesame oil from Agade — Šu-Aštakkal, man of [...]na; mu-da-[...]; oil expended. [Month:] nig2-kiri6.
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-gesz sila3 a-ga-de3-ta i-gaz-bara2 [x] lugal [x] x x [x] [...] im#-szi-gen-na 1(asz@c) i3-gesz sila3 a-ga-de3-ta su2-as-ta2#-kal2# lu2 x-x-na mu-da#-[x] i3 zi-ga#-[a] [iti] nig2#-kiri6#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 040. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 202 (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, P472340). 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.