Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 041
About this tablet
A compact delivery record from the Akkadian imperial period, written at Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq). It logs two consignments of dates packed in gurdub-baskets — one lot of two baskets overseen by an inspector named Zu-zu, a larger lot of five baskets under an inspector named Igunum — and records that an official called Lú-dula carried the whole shipment to Agade, the imperial capital. The tablet is a fragment of provincial bookkeeping: the kind of small, workaday document that kept the Akkadian empire's redistribution network running. Its survival in Madrid illustrates how thoroughly ancient cuneiform tablets have scattered across modern collections far from their origin.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two separate lots of dates, packed in baskets: first, two gurdub-baskets holding 3 ban2 each, handled by Zu-zu, the grain inspector; then five gurdub-baskets of the same measure, the responsibility of Igunum, also an inspector. Lú-dula then carried both shipments to Agade.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 gurdub-baskets of dates, 3 ban2 [each]; Zu-zu, inspector, [of] grain — 5 gurdub-baskets of dates, 3 ban2 [each]; Igunum, inspector — Lú-dula to Agade brought.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(asz@c) zu2#-lum# gurdub 3(ban2@c) zu-zu maszkim sze 5(asz@c) zu2-lum gurdub 3(ban2@c) i-gu-num2 maszkim lu2-du6#-la a-ga-de3#-sze3 i3-lah5
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 041. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 057 (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, P472341). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.