Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 071
About this tablet
An administrative commodity record from Adab (modern Bismaya, central Iraq), dating to the Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2150 BCE. It lists measured quantities of fenugreek and at least two other goods — one a damaged or technical name, the other a type of barley or grain — apparently allocated between two named individuals, Ašgibad and Dada, and then noted as 'returned.' The closing date formula pins the transaction to a specific month. Tablets like this are the everyday paperwork of Akkadian-era storehouses: small ledgers tracking who received what, and whether goods came back.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The record opens with a large disbursement: about 100 liters of fenugreek, plus roughly 25 liters of a second commodity (whose name is unclear), issued to a person called Ašgibad. A second, smaller batch follows — 20 liters more of fenugreek, an uncertain amount of the same second commodity, and an unspecified number of gur-jars of a barley product — assigned to someone named Dada. All of these goods were subsequently returned. The final lines note that the transaction belonged to a group whose name is now broken, and that it took place in the month of Šugar.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 barig 4 ban2 of fenugreek, 2 ban2 5 sila of zi-zi-bi2-a-num2 — Ašgibad. 2 ban2 of fenugreek, [n] sila of zi-zi-bi2-a-num2, [n] gur of šelu — Dada. Returned to hand. [Belonging] to the [...]-s. Month: Šugar.
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) gamun2# 2(ban2@c) 5(disz) sila3# zi#-zi-bi2-a-num2 asz8-gi4-bad3 2(ban2@c) gamun2 [n] sila3 zi-zi#-bi2-a-num2 [n] sze-lu2 gur da-da szu-a gi4-a [x x x]-ke4#-ne#-kam iti szu-gar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 071. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 296 (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, P472371). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.