Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 060
About this tablet
A wool-delivery record from ancient Adab (modern Bismaya, central Iraq), dating to the Akkadian period, roughly 2350–2150 BCE. It accounts for a substantial haul — one talent and 36 minas, close to 50 kilograms — of coarse or waste wool brought in by an official named Ur-Šupa-sikil, with a scribe named Lugal-itida named as a party to the transaction. The delivery was conveyed through an intermediary named Giri-gen-na and is linked to a building called the E2-ur2; the middle lines are broken and the precise legal act cannot be fully read. The tablet illustrates the meticulous commodity accounting that kept Mesopotamian palace and temple economies running, even in small transactions handled by named scribes.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One talent and 36 minas of coarse wool — delivered by Ur-Šupa-sikil. Lugal-itida, the scribe, was involved in the receiving or authorizing of the transfer, but the lines that would spell out exactly what happened next are too damaged to read. The goods passed through Giri-gen-na as the authorized carrier and are credited to the E2-ur2 building. The whole transaction was recorded in the month of Šu-gar.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 talent (and) 36 minas of coarse wool — wool of Ur-Šupa-sikil, he brought (it). Lugal-itida, [the scri]be, [...] to [...], [...] gave to him. Via Giri-gen-na. (It is of/from) the E2-ur2. Month: Šu-gar.
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) siki# mug# gu2 3(u) 6(disz) ma-na siki# ur-su3-pa-sikil-ke4 mu#-de6-am3 lugal#-iti-da [dub?]-sar#-ra [...]-ka#?-sze3 [x]-na-szum2 giri3-gen-na e2-ur2-kam iti szu-gar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 060. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 329 (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, P472360). 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.