Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 066
About this tablet
An administrative disbursement tablet from the Sargonic period (roughly 2350–2150 BCE), almost certainly from Adab, a Sumerian city in what is now central Iraq. It records allocations of beer and bread to named individuals within the household of the local governor's wife — a high-ranking woman who ran her own administrative establishment. The appearance of Ur-E'mah ('servant of the E'mah temple') among the recipients further anchors the text to Adab, whose great E'mah temple was one of the most important religious institutions in southern Mesopotamia. Such tablets are the routine paperwork of ancient bureaucracy: careful daily tallies of who received rations and how much.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The opening line is partially broken, but records a certain number of beer jars — measured by the kab2 unit — destined for the governor's wife's household. Individual allocations follow: Ur-Gurdub received 15 jars of beer; Ur-E'mah received 2 small jars; Da-du, Ba'a, and Ur-sa6 each received 2 jars. One bread ration of imgaga3 flour was also issued. Iškur received 4 jars of dark beer. A much larger lot — possibly 250 portions — of bread went to recipients whose designation is now damaged beyond reading. Two more jars of dark beer followed, and the tablet closes with a single jar received by someone whose name is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] jar(s) of beer, kab2(-measure) — wife of the governor: 15 (jars of) beer — Ur-Gurdub; 2 small jars — Ur-E'mah; 2 (jars) — Da-du; 2 (jars) — Ba'a; 2 (jars) — Ur-sa6; 1 (loaf of) bread of imgaga3-flour; 4 (jars of) dark beer — Iškur; [4×60+]10 (portions of) bread, x x [x]; 2 (jars of) dark beer [...]; 1 jar — in the hand of [x].
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[n] kasz# dug kab2 dam ensi2 1(u) 5(disz) kasz ur-gurdub 2(disz) dug tur ur-e2-mah 2(disz) da-du 2(disz) ba-a 2(disz) ur-sa6 1(disz) ninda zi3 imgaga3 4(disz) kasz ge6 iszkur# 4(gesz2)#? 1(u)# ninda x x [x] 2(disz) kasz ge6# [...] 1(disz) dug szu-[x]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 066. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 078 (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, P472366). 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.