Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 073
About this tablet
An administrative record from ancient Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), dating to the Akkadian empire period, roughly the mid-third millennium BCE. It lists fixed measures of dates distributed to a series of temples and named parties at Adab, including the great Emaḫ temple — one of the city's most important sanctuaries. A priestly group called the nu-eš3, cultic personnel sometimes described as lament-singers, performed and authorized the disbursement. The transaction was entered under the akiti festival month, placing it within the ceremonial rhythm of the Sumerian religious year and suggesting these date allocations may have served a ritual rather than purely subsistence purpose.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
During the akiti festival month, dates were issued from stock in the following amounts: two ban-measures to the Emaḫ temple, two ban-measures to the é-GAN2-iš building, two ban-measures to the é-ašgi building, an uncertain quantity to ki-an, one ban-measure to the Iškur temple (or a person named Iškur), and one ban-measure to ešpeš. The nu-priests carried out all of these disbursements.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 ban2 of dates — Emaḫ [temple]; 2 ban2 — é-GAN2-iš; 2 ban2 — é-ašgi; [n ban2] — ki-an; 1 ban2 — Iškur; 1 ban2 — ešpeš; The nu-priests gave it to him. Month: a2-[ki-ti].
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(ban2@c)#? zu2#-lum e2#-mah 2(ban2@c)#? e2#-GAN2#-isz# 2(ban2@c)#? e2# asz8#-gi4 [n(ban2@c)] ki-an 1(ban2@c) iszkur 1(ban2@c) esz5-pesz# nu-esz3-ke4-ne e-ne-szum2# iti a2-[ki-ti]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 073. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 058 (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, P472373). 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.