Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 051
About this tablet
An Akkadian-period administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq) recording four consignments of food commodities — dates, apples, and dried split fish, each packed in gurdub baskets — distributed in successive installments to a man named Amur-um, who bears a distinctly Akkadian name. The 'times N' formula marks each entry as a repeated or multiplied delivery, a standard Sumerian bookkeeping device for tracking rations over time. The tablet is a small but vivid example of how palace or temple administrators around 2300–2100 BCE kept precise accounts of individual food allocations, writing them in Sumerian even when the recipients had Akkadian names — a linguistic mixing characteristic of the Akkadian imperial period. The opening quantity is lost to damage.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
An unknown number of baskets of dates — one delivery. Two ban2 of dates — two deliveries. One ban2 of dates plus one ban2 of apples in a basket — three deliveries. Two ban2 of dried, split fish in a basket — four deliveries. All of it was given to Amur-um. (The quantity on the first line is missing; the rest of the tablet is readable.)
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] dates, basket(s) — [ti]mes 1; 2 ban2 of dates — times 2; 1 ban2 of dates, 1 ban2 of apples, basket(s) — times 3; 2 ban2 of split fish, basket(s) — times 4; for Amur-um, [it was] given to him.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[n] zu2#-lum gurdub# [a]-ra2# 1(disz@t) 2(asz@c) zu2-lum a-ra2 2(disz@t) 1(asz@c) zu2-lum 1(asz@c) haszhur# gurdub# a-ra2 3(disz@t) 2(asz@c) ku6 al-dar-ra gurdub a-ra2 4(disz@t) [a]-mur-um-ra [e]-na-szum2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 051. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 222 (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, P472351). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.