Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 004
About this tablet
A fragmentary administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, Iraq), dating to the Akkadian period, roughly 2334–2154 BCE. The surviving lower lines record the issuance of a textile garment — probably to, or through, a merchant named An-na-šum2 — with a scribe named I-lum-gar3 authorizing or attesting the transaction. The broken upper section mentions weavers, a house or institution, an official commissioner, and a city boundary or bank, suggesting this was once part of a larger textile production and distribution record. Adab was a major administrative and craft center under Akkadian rule and has yielded many such routine bureaucratic tablets.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The top of the tablet is too damaged to read in full. What survives there mentions weavers, a building or institution, a commissioner acting on its behalf, and a location at the edge of the city. Clearer toward the bottom, the record identifies I-lum-gar3 as the scribe and names An-na-šum2 twice — once in connection with the scribe's entry and once as a merchant, with a count of one. The final line closes the document with a straightforward statement: a garment has been issued.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n ...] weaver(s) [...]... [...]-lum [...] house [...] their commissioner [...] bank of the city [n?] I-lum-gar3, scribe — An-na-šum2. 1 merchant: An-na-šum2. A garment has been issued.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[n ...] usz#-bar [...]-x [...]-lum# [...]-e2 [...] maszkim#-bi [...] gu2# iri [n?] i3#-lum-gar3 dub-sar an-na-szum2 1(asz@c) dam-gar3 an-na-szum2 tug2 zi-ga-am6
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 004. 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 214 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472304). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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