Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 136
About this tablet
An administrative tablet recording the disbursement of textiles — most likely garments — from Adab (modern Bismaya, Iraq), dated to the Akkadian period, roughly 2350–2150 BCE. The surviving text tracks goods by weight, using the standard Mesopotamian system of minas and shekels, and closes with the formulaic verb 'was given to him/her,' the routine notation a scribe appended to confirm delivery. The tablet is heavily damaged; the recipient, the authorizing official, and much of the transaction detail are lost. Even in its broken state, it is a small piece of the vast textile-accounting bureaucracy that ran Akkadian-period cities like Adab.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A consignment of garments was delivered — their total weight was 18 minas and possibly 10 shekels, with a further 4 minas recorded in a badly damaged section. The final readable line confirms the goods were handed over. Who sent them, who received them, and most of the surrounding detail are lost to breakage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] x [...] garment(s)?, delivery/rotation [...] its weight: 18 minas, [1]0(?) shekels x x [...] [x] x [...] [...] 4 mi[nas] [...] [...] was given to him/her [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[x] x [...] tug2#? bala# [...] ki#-la2#-bi# 1(u@c) 8(asz@c) ma#-na# 1(u)#? gin2 x x [...] [x] x [...] [...] 4(asz@c) ma#-[na] [...] [...] e#-na#-szum2# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 136. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 220 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472436). 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.