Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 045
About this tablet
A small Akkadian-period administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), recording allocations of dates — measured in ban2-units and packed in gurdub storage baskets — distributed to several named individuals. The presence of the Akkadian personal name Amurum fits squarely in the Sargonic era (roughly 2334–2154 BCE), when Akkadian names began appearing alongside Sumerian ones in the administrative records of southern Mesopotamian cities. The tablet is unfortunately fragmentary: at least three recipients survive in whole or part, but several lines are too broken to read. This is the everyday paperwork of a temple or palace granary — routine ration bookkeeping of the kind that filled ancient storerooms by the tens of thousands.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records a delivery of dates: five ban2-measures (roughly 50 liters) loaded into a gurdub basket, counted as one lot. Below that, three ban2 are allocated to a person named Bad-di-NE, and another three to Amurum. At least two more recipients follow — one whose name begins with 'Ti-' and another whose name begins with 'Ur-' — but both are too damaged to read in full. Several lines in the middle are entirely lost. The rest of the tablet is broken.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 ban2 of dates — a gurdub-basket, times 1. 3 ban2 — Bad-di-NE. 3 ban2 — Amurum. [n ban2] — Ti-[...] [...] [...] 2 ban2 [n] — Ur-[...]-[...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
5(asz@c)# zu2-lum gurdub a#-ra2 1(disz) 3(asz@c) bad3#-di-NE 3(asz@c) a-mur-um [n] ti#-x-[x] [...] [...] 2(asz@c)# [n] ur-[x]-x-[x]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 045. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 328 (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, P472345). 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.