Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 048
About this tablet
An administrative labor roster from Akkadian-period Adab (modern Bismaya, central-southern Iraq), listing groups of workers by personal name with quantities assigned to each. The entries total twelve, all held under the authority of a man named Giri-gen-na, who served as šabra — the steward or chief administrator of the estate or temple household. A second, partially preserved grouping of the same names on the reverse or a second section appears to record a different allocation or time period for the same workers. Documents like this were the everyday paperwork of institutional labor management in ancient Mesopotamia, tracking who worked under whom and in what numbers.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet assigns workers to named individuals: two each to Amar-edina, Gissu, Lugal-geš, Ur-erra, and Ur-gu, and one to Lugal-nig — twelve in all, classed as carriers (the designation is uncertain). All fall under the authority of Giri-gen-na, administrator of the estate. A second section, partly damaged, redistributes the same workers in different numbers: two for Lugal-geš, three for Gissu, and one or more for Amar-edina, with the rest of the entries broken off or missing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] x [...] [...]-Inanna, 2 Amar-edina, 2 Gissu, 2 Lugal-geš, 2 Ur-erra, 2 Ur-gu, 1 Lugal-nig: Total: 12 [carriers?]. Giri-gen-na, šabra of the estate. 2 Lugal-geš, 3 Gissu, 1 [n] Amar-edina, [n] Gissu, 2 Lugal-geš.
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
[...] x [...] [x x]-inanna 2(asz@c)# amar#-edin#-na 2(asz@c) gissu 2(asz@c) lugal-gesz 2(asz@c) ur-erx(KISZ)-ra 2(asz@c) ur-gu 1(asz@c) lugal-nig2 szunigin 1(u@c) 2(asz@c) IL2#? giri3-gen-na szabra e2-kam# 2(asz@c) lugal-gesz 3(asz@c) gissu 1(asz@c) [n] amar#-edin#-[na] [n] gissu# 2(asz@c) lugal-gesz
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 048. 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 303 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472348). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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