Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 209
About this tablet
This is a barley account from Adab (modern Bismaya) dating to the Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2200 BCE — one of the countless everyday ledgers kept by Mesopotamian temple or palace administrators. It records quantities of grain, measured in the standard capacity units gur and barig, credited to or disbursed among a list of named individuals, several of them apparently women (their names begin with the element 'Nin-', 'lady'). Adab has produced a substantial cache of such Akkadian-period grain accounts, giving historians a granular view of how institutional households tracked labor, rations, or dues at the level of individual people.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a grain ledger. It opens with a now-broken total figure of barley, then lists what different people received or supplied: Mama-ummi's entry (amount lost), 2 gur 2 barig for Nin-nigzu, 5 units for Aštar, 2 gur for Tani, 2 gur for Nin-adgal, 3 gur for Nig-banda, 2 gur for someone whose name is broken away, and finally 1 gur 2 barig either given to or received from a person named Menigin. In short: a simple bookkeeping tally of barley moving in or out of a household or storehouse, name by name.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] gur of barley: Mama-ummi; 2 gur 2 barig: Nin-nigzu; 5 (units): Aštar; 2 gur: Tani; 2 gur: Nin-adgal; 3 gur: Nig-banda; 2 gur: Nin-[...] (name broken); 1 gur 2 barig: from Menigin.
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
[n] sze [gur] ma#-ma-um-mi# 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) nin-nig2-zu 5(disz) asz#-dar# 2(asz@c) ta2-ni2 2(asz@c) () nin-ad2-gal 3(asz@c) nig2#-banda3 2(asz@c) nin#-[...] 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) me-nigin3#-ta#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 209. 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 312 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472509). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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