Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 069
About this tablet
An administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), dated to the Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2150 BCE. It records a distribution of about 100 liters of salt for a settlement of some 900 people, with bread rations confirmed as fully provided. The goods flow through an orchard manager named Ur-tu-aš-gi₄ and the household's chief steward, ultimately destined for the great house of the sukkal — the senior minister or vizier of this institutional estate. Records like this one reveal the daily logistics of Mesopotamia's large administrative households under Akkadian imperial rule: commodities tracked, deliveries confirmed, and the month stamped at the foot of the clay.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet accounts for roughly 100 liters of salt allocated to a settlement of about 900 people, with bread rations recorded as fully covered. The transaction is tied to an orchard held by a man named Ur-tu-aš-gi₄, managed through the estate's chief steward. All of this was dispatched to the great house of the sukkal — the top official of the household — and confirmed as delivered. A work gang's movement is noted; the goods were formally drawn out and released. The whole record is dated to the month of šu-gar.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 barig 4 ban₂ of salt. Settlement: 1(×600) + 5(×60) persons [= 900 people]. Bread rations — fully supplied. Orchard of Ur-tu-aš-gi₄. Šabra of the household. For the great house, for the sukkal. It has been delivered there. Work-force [of ...] — upon their going. [It] was drawn out. 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(barig@c) 4(ban2@c) mun ki-tusz 1(gesz'u@c) 5(gesz2@c) lu2 ninda ab-si kiri6 ur5-tu-asz8-gi4 szabra e2 e2 gal-sukkal-sze3 im#-szi#-gen-na-am3 surx(ERIM)-[x] du-ni al-zi iti# szu-gar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 069. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 113 (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, P472369). 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.