Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 099
About this tablet
An orchard or garden account from the Akkadian period, almost certainly from the city of Adab in southern Iraq. The tablet tallies several types of trees — cedar, hum-trees, mes-trees, and zarda-trees among them — recording their quantities and, in two entries, their position along a garden boundary. Each block of trees is linked to a named individual, probably a plot-holder or garden-keeper responsible to a temple or palace administration. The closing lines, partly damaged, appear to supply the conventional name for one of the tree varieties mentioned in the body of the text.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a garden inventory, organized by plot-holder. Ur-Gibil's garden contains three hum-and-mes trees and ten zarda trees currently lying flat — almost certainly newly transplanted stock. Ur-Ninpirig's garden holds two small asznan-gam trees and two cedars planted along the boundary. Three more boundary cedars belong to Ur-su; Ur-sudda has two hum-and-mes trees; Lugal-karre holds two trees of a type the damage has made unreadable. The final entry — also partly lost — seems to record the proper name for one of the species listed above.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 hum-trees (and) mes-trees, 10 zarda-trees, lying, [garden of] Ur-Gibil(?): 2 asznan-gam(-trees), small, 2 cedar, bordering, [garden of] Ur-Ninpirig: 3 cedar, bordering — Ur-su: 2 hum-trees (and) mes-trees — Ur-sudda: 2 [...]-ma trees — Lugal-karre: the ab-[...]-tree — it is its name.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
3(asz@c) gesz-hum mes 1(u@c) gesz za-ar-da nu2 kiri6# ur#-gibil#? 2(asz@c) asznan-gam# tur 2(asz@c)# erin# za3-us2 kiri6 ur-nin#-pirig 3(asz@c) erin# za3-us2 ur-su# 2(asz@c) gesz#-hum mes# ur#-sud3-da# 2(asz@c)# gesz x ma lugal-kar-re2 gesz ab-x-am3 mu-ni
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 099. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 146 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472399). 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.