Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 116
About this tablet
An administrative receipt tablet from ancient Adab (modern Bismaya, in southern Iraq), dating to the Akkadian period, roughly 2350–2150 BCE. It records the weighing and disbursement of 86 bundles of thread or cord — totaling 2 minas by the standard stone-weight system — issued to a senior official called the 'lord' (EN). Short, formulaic tablets like this one were the routine paperwork of Mesopotamian institutional life, tracking fiber and textile goods moving through a temple or palace storehouse. The closing month-date anchors the transaction in the harvest season.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Eighty-six bundles of thread were weighed out on the stone-weight scales, coming to 2 minas in total. They were given to the lord and recorded as received in his hands — disbursed and done. The transaction took place during the barley-harvest month.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine86 [bundles of] thread-cord — from stone[-weight] minas, 2 minas' [worth], was weighed out. To the lord was given to him. The thread is in his hand — was disbursed. Month: [barley-]harvest.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 6(asz@c)# gu sa na4# gu2-ta 2(asz@c) gu2-sze3 ba-la2 en-ra e-na-szum2 gu szu-na-kam ba-zi iti# sze-|SZE.SZE|-kin#-a#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 116. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 149 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472416). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
Related tablets
Related sources
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.