Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 052
About this tablet
An Akkadian-period food-delivery record from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), documenting two consecutive monthly allotments of sheep, dates, fish, and garlic — stored in basket containers — issued to a man named Amurrum. The tablet is laid out in two tidy parallel blocks, each anchored to a named calendar month and closed with a standard receipt formula confirming handover. Documents exactly like this formed the day-to-day paperwork of Mesopotamian temple and palace economies, tracking who received provisions and when across a multi-month accounting window.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two monthly food deliveries were made to a man named Amurrum. In the first month — the month of Šuba-nun — he received 2 prime-quality sheep, 30 measures of dates packed in baskets, 30 measures of fish in baskets, and 5 measures of clean garlic in baskets. The following month, the barley-harvest month, the same goods were delivered again, except the fish allotment dropped to 10 measures. All of it was given to him.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 prime-quality sheep 30 dates — in gurdub baskets 30 fish — in gurdub baskets 5 pure garlic — in gurdub baskets [For the] 1st [time] — month: Šuba-nun 2 [+n] prime-quality sheep 30 dates — in gurdub baskets 10 fish — in gurdub baskets 5 pure garlic — in gurdub baskets [For the] 2nd time Month: Barley-harvest For Amurrum: 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
2(asz@c)# udu niga 3(u@c)# zu2-lum# gurdub# 3(u@c)# ku6# gurdub# 5(asz@c) szum2#-sikil# gurdub# a#-ra2 <1(disz@t)> iti szubax(|MUSZ3xZA|)#-nun# 2(asz@c) [n] udu niga 3(u@c)# zu2-lum gurdub# 1(u@c) ku6 gurdub 5(asz@c) szum2-sikil gurdub a-ra2 2(disz@t) iti# sze-sag11-ku5 a#-mur-um-ra e#-na-szum2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 052. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 210 (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, P472352). 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.