Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 047
About this tablet
A small administrative ration or personnel roster from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, dating to the late Early Dynastic or early Akkadian period (roughly 2350–2200 BCE). It lists individuals by name — Lu-Inanna, Gissu, Il, Lugal-nita-zi, and others — each assigned a measured quantity, probably of grain, with some entries also noting one or two additional dependents. The names are characteristically Sumerian, several invoking deities (Inanna, Utu) or royal epithets (lugal, 'king'). Although portions of the middle section are broken away, the surviving entries show the regular bookkeeping of a temple or palace redistribution economy. The tablet is too damaged to recover precise totals or context, but it is a clear example of the administrative literacy that made Adab one of the major scribal centres of its era.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One asz-unit of grain (or similar commodity) goes to Lu-Inanna; one unit to Gissu; one unit to Il. Lugal-nita-zi receives one unit plus one for a dependent. The next entry — for someone whose name begins Lugal-an-dul... — is only partially preserved. Several lines in the middle are too damaged to read, with quantities and parts of names lost. The surviving lower entries show: one unit for Lugal-nam-mah (plus one dependent), one unit for Lu-banda (plus two dependents), and one unit for Ur-Utu (plus two dependents). A final, heavily broken line with the name Igi-si4 cannot be read completely.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (asz-unit) — Lu-Inanna 1 (unit) — Gissu 1 (asz-unit) — Il 1 (asz-unit) — Lugal-nita-zi, 1 (additional unit) Lugal-an-dul[...(?)] [n] — Igi-si4 [n] — Gissu [n] — Lugal-nita-zi, 1 (additional unit) [n] — Lugal-nam-mah, 1 (additional unit) 1 (asz-unit) — Lu-banda, 2 (additional units) 1 (asz-unit) — Ur-Utu, 2 (additional units) [n] — Igi-si4 [...]
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) lu2-inanna 1(disz) gissu 1(asz@c) il2 1(asz@c) lugal-nita-zi 1(disz@t) lugal-an-dul3#? [n] igi#-si4 [n] gissu# [n] lugal#-nita#-zi 1(disz@t) [n] lugal-nam2-mah 1(disz@t) 1(asz@c) lu2-banda3 2(disz@t) 1(asz@c) ur-utu# 2(disz@t) [n] igi#-si4# [x]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 047. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 237 (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, P472347). 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.