Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 001
About this tablet
An administrative receipt tablet from Akkadian-period Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), recording the disbursement and receipt of premium bread and pottery jars at a canal delivery point. Two officials anchor the transaction: Lugal-an-dul3, the chief cupbearer — a senior palace steward responsible for provisions — and Mes-ki-gal-la, the governor of Adab, under whose authority the goods moved. Such tablets are the routine paperwork of Mesopotamian palace administration, holding named officials personally accountable for commodities passing through the supply chain.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Three units of top-grade bread were logged, along with thirty-six gu2-zi jars and eighteen more jars of a commodity now too damaged to read. The goods were received — though the full entry for who received them is broken. The delivery or collection point was the mouth of the small canal, and the bread was formally issued and disbursed. Lugal-an-dul3, the chief cupbearer, handled the transaction, acting under the authority of Mes-ki-gal-la, governor of Adab.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 [units] of finest-quality bread; 36 gu2-zi jars; 18 jars of [...]; [...] received. At the mouth of the small canal — bread disbursed. Lugal-an-dul3, chief cupbearer; Mes-ki-gal-la, governor of Adab.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
3(asz@c) ninda ne-sag 3(u@c) 6(asz@c) dug gu2-zi 2(u@c)# la2 2(asz@c) dug [...] [...] szu ba-ti ka i7 tur ninda zi-ga lugal-an-dul3 sagi mah# mes-ki#-gal-la# ensi2# adab
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 001. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 003 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472301). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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