Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 056
About this tablet
A small administrative disbursement record from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), dated to the Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2100 BCE. It tracks the allocation of a single sila — about one liter — of pig fat (lard) passing through a donkey herdsman named Su-durun and an official whose name is spelled out syllabically in Akkadian as Si-ip-ri-is-kal. The fat moved through a named administrative intermediary and was dated to the local barley-harvest month. Documents like this were the routine paperwork of institutional livestock and food management in ancient Mesopotamia, and the syllabic spelling of the Akkadian personal name marks this tablet as a product of the more phonetic scribal conventions introduced under Akkadian imperial administration.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One sila (roughly one liter) of lard was disbursed, involving a donkey herdsman named Su-durun and an official called Sipriškal. The fat was sent through the regular administrative channel, via [Sha]-rikam. The transaction was recorded in the month of barley-cutting.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sila of pig fat (lard); Su-durun, donkey herdsman — Si-ip-ri-is-kal: fat disbursed, [sent] via the established route, [through/to Sha]-ri-kam; month: sze-[šeš]-kin-ku5-a (the barley-cutting month).
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) i3-szah2 sila3 su-durunx(|KU.KU|) sipa ansze si-ip-ri2-is-kal i3 zi-ga-a giri3#-gen-na [sza]-ri2-kam iti sze-|SZE.SZE|-kin-ku5-a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 056. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 337 (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, P472356). 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.