Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 169
About this tablet
This is a small economic tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya), dating to the Akkadian period, roughly the 23rd century BCE. It records quantities of foodstuffs — cumin, flour, and groats — being measured out and charged to or received by several named individuals, including a man identified only by his craft, 'the brewer.' Tablets like this are the bookkeeping of an ancient household or temple storeroom, tracking the flow of provisions among workers and officials rather than anything ceremonial.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record tracks a handful of food items — some cumin, a flour called zizānu, and quantities of groats and another flour — being issued out in gur and sila measures. Several people are named as parties to these transactions: a man called Egi, someone associated with a pork or sausage product, and finally a brewer and a man named Lugal-hegal. A couple of lines in the middle are too damaged to read. It reads like a routine tally from a storehouse, keeping account of who received what.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] cumin, 1 (unit), [n] sila; 5 sila of zizānu-flour (a wheat/emmer product); Egi; the man of the sausage/pork-product; [...] (broken, two signs illegible) [...]; 2 gur, ma-sim-measure of groats; 2 gur, ma-sim-measure of zizu-flour; 4 gur 2 barig; Naba(?)lu; the brewer; Lugal-hegal.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[n] gamun2# 1(disz) [n] sila3 5(disz)# sila3 |ZI&ZI|-a-num2 e#-gi lu2 nig2-sa-ha [...] x x [...] 2(asz@c) ma#-sim# nig2#-ar3-ra 2(asz@c) ma-sim zi3-u2 4(asz@c) gur 2(barig@c) [na?]-ba#-lu5# lu2-bappir# lugal-he2-[gal2]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 169. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 239 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472469). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.