Lippmann Coll 206

About this tablet

This is a small administrative wool-account from Adab in southern Mesopotamia, dating to the Akkadian period (roughly 2300–2100 BCE). It records amounts of wool, weighed out in minas and shekels, associated with a series of named women — probably spinners or wool-workers attached to a temple or estate household. The closing line marks the wool as returned or accounted for 'from the wool-workers' in a particular month, the kind of routine bookkeeping that kept track of textile production labor in an early Mesopotamian institution.

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

Written in modern English

This tablet is a wool ledger. It lists a series of weight amounts — twelve minas here, fifteen there, down to fractions of a mina — each tied to a woman's name: Mamummi, Ninnig, Aštar, Taniya, Nin-adgal, Nigbanda, Nin-nigzu, Meniginta. These were evidently workers responsible for spinning or processing wool, and the tablet is tallying how much wool passed through each of their hands. At the end, the scribe notes that the wool has been 'returned' or settled, and that the whole account concerns the wool-workers, dated to the month called Nig-kiriš (the 'garden' month). A couple of signs near the middle are too damaged to read clearly.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

12 minas less 15 shekels of wool — ...(ri?): Mamummi. 7 minas, Nin-nig; 4 minas, 15 minas, Aštar; 4 1/2 minas, 12 minas, Taniya, 12 1/3 minas, Nin-adgal, 1x+4 minas, ...(damaged)..., Nigbanda, 11 1/2 minas, Nin-nigzu; 5 minas, 14 2/3 minas, Meniginta. Returned (brought back into hand) — it is from the wool-workers. Month: Nig-kiriš.

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(u@c) 2(asz@c) la2 1(u@c) 5(disz) gin2 siki ri
ma-ma#-um-mi
7(asz@c) nin-nig2# 4(asz@c)
1(u@c) 5(asz@c) asz-dar 4(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c)
1(u@c) 2(asz@c) ta2-ni2-a
1(u@c) 2(asz@c) 1/3(asz@c) nin-ad2-gal
1(u@c) n 4(asz@c) x x nig2-banda3
1(u@c) 1(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) ma-na nin-nig2-zu 5(asz@c)
1(u@c) 4(asz@c) 2/3(asz@c) me-nigin3-ta
szu-a gi4-a
ki siki-ke4-ne-kam
iti nig2-kiri6

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 206. 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 023 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472506). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).

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