Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 196
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from Adab, dating to the Sargonic (Akkadian) period, roughly the late third millennium BCE. It records textiles — sashes or headbands and cloaks — moving in and out of a storehouse, tracked against the total stock and reconciled with the wool supply. Such tablets were the bookkeeping backbone of institutional textile production, where officials had to account for every garment issued to or returned by weavers and other workers.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Twenty-nine sashes were taken out of the total stock and issued. Of that same total stock, some were handed over to a named individual. Fifteen more sashes and two cloaks belonging to the weaver were returned and checked back into inventory. This whole transaction falls under the wool account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine29 bar-si sashes (headbands), from the total — released (issued). From the total — given to him. 15 bar-si sashes, 2 bar-dul5 cloaks, (of) the weaver — returned/accounted for (in hand). It is from the wool (account).
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
3(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) bar-si sa-da5 me-nigin3-ta a-du8-de3 me-nigin3-ta e#-na-szum2# 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) bar-si sa-da5 2(asz@c)# bar-dul5#? usz#-bar# szu-a gi4-a ki siki-ka-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 196. 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 040 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472496). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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