Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 125
About this tablet
An administrative textile inventory from Adab, the ancient city in southern Iraq, dating to the Akkadian period (roughly 2334–2154 BCE). A palace or temple scribe recorded hundreds of garments in two categories: those still outstanding as a balance owed against personal property, and those already registered as personal property holdings, before tallying a grand total of 344 garments. The final lines confirm that garments are physically on hand both at the city's quay — a key hub for trade and transit — and within the palace itself, tracking where institutional textiles were actually stored. This kind of multi-location stock check is a hallmark of the meticulous Akkadian-period bureaucracy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The record shows two batches of garments: 168 pieces still owed or outstanding from personal property accounts, and 176 pieces already registered as personal property — coming to a grand total of 344 garments in the personal property ledger. The document then confirms current locations: a stock of garments is on hand at the quay, and another stock is present in the palace. The precise quantities for those two locations are not given in the surviving lines.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine168 garments — outstanding balance [from] personal property; 176 garments — personal property. Total: 344 garments — personal property. Garments of the quay — they are present. Garments of the palace — they are present.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(gesz2@c)# 4(u@c)# [8(asz@c)] tug2 nig2-la2 nig2-su-[a] 2(gesz2@c) 5(u@c) 6(asz@c) tug2 nig2-su-a szunigin# 5(gesz2@c) 4(u@c) 4(asz@c) tug2 nig2-su-a tug2 kar-ra gal2-la-am3 tug2# e2#-gal-la gal2#-la#-am3#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 125. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 295 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472425). 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.