Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 176
About this tablet
An Akkadian-period administrative record from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), most likely dating to the late third millennium BCE. It documents a disbursement of wool in mana weights to six named recipients, totalling three talents — roughly 90 kilograms — and closes with a local month name. Records like this one were the paperwork backbone of the ancient textile economy, in which temples and palaces controlled large flocks and issued raw wool to workers, commonly women, for spinning and weaving into cloth. The final lines are partly broken and appear to preserve the beginning of a second, incomplete transaction that cannot be fully read.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Six people received wool from the institutional stores this month: Mamummi got 30 mana; Nin-nig, 30; Ašdar, 40; Tani'a, 30; Nin-adgal, 30; and Me-nigin-ta, 20 — three talents of wool in total. There is also a damaged entry for someone whose name begins Ur-[su]-pa-sikil, but the rest of that line is lost. The wool was issued from the wool account and handed over to the recipients during the month of Ab-eza-ziga.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine30 mana of wool — Mamummi; 30 — Nin-nig; 40 — Ašdar; 30 — Tani'a; 30 — Nin-adgal; 20 — Me-nigin-ta. Grand total: 3 talents of wool. [Wool? for] Ur-[su?]-pa-sikil? [...] From the wool[-account/handlers] [...] He gave to him. Month: Ab-eza-ziga.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
3(u) siki ma-na ma-ma-um#-mi# 3(u) nin-nig2 4(u) asz-dar 3(u) ta2-ni2-a 3(u) nin-ad2-gal# 2(u) me-nigin3#-ta# szunigin# 3(asz@c)# siki# gu2# [siki?] ur#-[su3?]-pa-sikil#? [...] ki siki-ke4-ne [x] e-na-szum2 iti ab-e3-zi-ga
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 176. 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 256 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472476). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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