Lippmann Coll 171

About this tablet

This is a small administrative memorandum from the Akkadian-period city of Adab (modern Bismaya), probably around 2300–2200 BCE, recording a short list of wool and leather goods — a hide, a garment, a leather strap of some kind — closing with the name of the person responsible, Ur-gibil. Texts like this were the everyday bookkeeping of Mesopotamian households and workshops: brief tallies of materials issued, received, or held in stock, written by a scribe tracking textile and leather production or distribution. It is a fragment of ordinary economic life rather than a literary or royal document.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

This note records four items handed over or logged in an account: one unit of carded wool marked as 'sur'-grade, one hide of select quality also marked 'sur', one leather nose-strap (likely for an animal harness), also 'sur'-grade, and one garment — a black belt or sash. The record is signed off with the name Ur-gibil, presumably the official or workman responsible for these goods.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

1 (unit): carded wool, sur(-quality) 1 (unit): hide, select/front-grade, sur 1 (unit): leather nose-strap, sur 1 (unit): garment — black belt/sash (recipient/responsible party:) Ur-gibil

Indicative reading — translated without a photograph. Generated from the transliteration alone, without examining the original. Read it as an accessible first taste, not as a verified catalogue entry.

Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

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Transliteration

1(asz@c) siki# hu-la# surx(ERIM)
1(asz@c) kusz# igi surx(ERIM)#
1(asz@c) giri17 kusz# surx(ERIM)#
1(asz@c) tug2#? nig2-la2 ge6#?
ur#-gibil6#

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 171. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: CL 162 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472471). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).

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