Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 027
About this tablet
A small commodity disbursement record from the Akkadian period city of Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), now held in the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid. It documents the issue of wool, sesame oil, garlic, and bitumen in connection with a gardener named Ur-Gibil, with an official named Lugal-amu listed as responsible. The tablet closes with a month name that dates the transaction. Thousands of tablets like this were generated each year across Mesopotamia to track goods moving in and out of temple and palace storerooms — the unglamorous paperwork that kept ancient institutions running.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Issued from stores: 10 minas of wool; 1 sila of sesame oil and garlic; 1 unit of bitumen from the house supplies. The gardener Ur-Gibil — [the middle passage is too damaged to read in full] — came and received these goods; they were handed over to him. The oil is recorded as formally drawn from the account. Responsible official: Lugal-amu. Date: the month of mu-tir.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 minas of wool; 1 sila of sesame oil [and] garlic; 1 (unit) of bitumen — house ration. Ur-Gibil, the gardener, [...] small, small [...]; [came] to him; [he] gave to him. The oil is the expenditure. Lugal-amu. Month: mu-tir.
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
1(u@c) siki ma-na 1(asz@c) i3-gesz gesz szum2-ma sila3 1(asz@c) esir4 e2-ba ur-gibil4#? nu-kiri6# [x]-x-tur-tur#-[sze3?] [im]-szi-gen-na# [e]-na-szum2 i3 zi-ga-am3 lugal#-a-mu iti mu-tir
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 027. 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 287 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472327). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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