Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 208
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from Adab, dating to the Akkadian (Sargonic) period, roughly the 23rd century BCE. It is a textile bookkeeping record: a scribe listed named individuals — mostly women, likely weavers or household dependents — and the quantities of bar-dul5 cloaks or wool allotted to each, closing with a note that these goods came from the wool stores and a dated month. Such lists are the routine paperwork of a palace or temple textile workshop, the kind of institution that employed large numbers of women spinning and weaving wool into cloth for the Akkadian state.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a stock list from a textile workshop. It records cloaks and wool handed out to a group of people — a weaver, and named individuals including Mamummi, Geme-Enlil, Aštar (with six shekels of silver noted alongside), Tania, Nin-adgal, someone called Nigbanda, Nin-nigzu, and Sebetum — each credited with a quantity, mostly one or two units. A closing note explains that these garments are on hand, drawn from the wool supply, and the whole account is dated to the month of Ab-eziga. Several lines are broken, so a few names and numbers are only partly legible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 bar-dul5 garments: the weaver — 1 (each) Mamummi 2 (units): Geme-Enlil 6 (units): Aštar; 6 (shekels?) silver 1: Tania — 1 1: Nin-adgal — 1 (...): Nigbanda [...] [n], 1: Nin-nigzu — 1 1: Sebetum Garments that are on hand (in stock) — they are from the wool (stores). Month: Ab-e'zi-ga.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(asz@c) bar-dul5 usz#-bar# 1(disz@t) ma-ma-um-mi 2(disz) geme2-en-lil2 6(asz@c) asz-dar 6(disz) ku3#? 1(asz@c) ta2-ni2#-[a] 1(disz@t) 1(asz@c) nin-ad2-[gal] 1(disz@t) () nig2-banda3#[] [n?] 1(asz@c) nin#-[nig2-zu] 1(disz@t) 1(disz) se-[be2-tum] tug2 bar-ra gal2#-la# ki siki-me iti ab-e3-zi-ga-am3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 208. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 244 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472508). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.