Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 179
About this tablet
An administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), dating to the Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2100 BCE. It records the disbursement of large quantities of wool — weighed in talents and minas — to named individuals: two men bearing names invoking the god Enlil, a shepherd called Du-du, and a scribe named Ur-a2 who received his portion in two separate installments. The tablet closes with a grand total of more than eleven talents of prime wool drawn from the institutional wool-workers' stores, sealed with the standard receipt formula — routine bureaucratic bookkeeping, but a vivid window into the managed wool economy that sustained one of early Mesopotamia's major administrative cities.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The following people received wool: Ur-Enlil got 1 talent and 27 minas; Enlil-lē got 1 talent and 7 minas; the shepherd Du-du received [a broken number of] talents and 40 minas. The scribe Ur-a2's allocation was paid out in two installments — 1 talent 17 minas the first time, then [a broken quantity of] talents and 1⅔ minas the second time. Grand total: 11 talents and 32⅔ minas of prime wool, drawn from the wool-workers' stores. Everything was received.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 talent, 27 minas of wool — Ur-Enlil. 1 talent, 7 minas — Enlil-lē. [x] talents, 40 minas — Du-du the shepherd. 1 talent, 17 minas — [first] installment. [x] talents, 1⅔ minas — [second] installment: Ur-a2, the scribe. Total: 11 talents, 32⅔ minas of prime wool [...]. From the wool-workers. Received.
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
1(asz@c) siki gu2 3(u) la2 3(disz@t) ma-na ur-en-lil2 1(asz@c) gu2 7(disz)# ma-na en-lil2-le# [n] gu2 4(u) ma-na du#-du sipa 1(asz@c) gu2 2(u) la2 3(disz@t) ma-na [a]-ra2# 1(disz)-kam# [n] gu2# 1(disz) 2/3(disz) ma#-na [a]-ra2# 2(disz)-kam ur#-a2# dub-sar szunigin# 1(u@c) 1(asz@c) gu2 3(u) 2(disz) 2/3(disz) ma-na siki# sag-x-kam ki# siki-ke4-ne szu ba-ti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 179. 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 325 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472479). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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