Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 098
About this tablet
A small administrative tree inventory from Akkadian-period Adab, recording counts of poplars and two other cultivated plants across a series of named orchards and garden estates. The holdings are attributed in turn to a local dignitary (identified by title rather than personal name), an institution called asz8-gi4, and the god Enlil — whose temple estate controlled productive agricultural land in this region. Tablets like this are the everyday paperwork of ancient orchard management: a scribe counting living trees plot by plot so that administrators could track assets under each garden's responsibility. The document is routine and terse, a bookkeeping entry rather than a legal or literary text.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records a tree count across several named gardens. One sweet-barley plant, one poplar, and four conifers are assigned to a local dignitary. One more poplar belongs to the orchard of Urtu-asz8gi4. Two sweet-barley plants are in the orchard of the asz8-gi4 institution, and six more grow in the orchard of the god Enlil. A brief, matter-of-fact inventory of living trees held across temple and private garden estates in one small district of ancient Adab.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sze-du10 1 poplar 4 u3-suh5 — [belonging to] his eminence 1 poplar — orchard of Urtu-asz8gi4 2 sze-du10 — orchard of asz8-gi4 6 sze-du10 — orchard of Enlil
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(asz@c) sze-du10# 1(asz@c) asalx(|A.TU.A.TU.DU8.LISZ|)# 4(asz@c) u3-suh5 nam-mah-ni 1(asz@c) asalx(|A.TU.A.TU.DU8.LISZ|) kiri6 ur5-tu-asz8-gi4 2(asz@c) sze-du10 kiri6 asz8-gi4 6(asz@c) sze-du10 kiri6 en-lil2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 098. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 103 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472398). 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.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.