Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 212
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya) dating to the Akkadian (Sargonic) period, roughly 2300–2200 BCE, when much of southern Mesopotamia was organized under the world's first territorial empire. It records an inventory of woolen garments — some 'first-quality,' some associated with a weaver — along with their weights in minas, tied to named individuals and closed with a note that the goods were returned or received back, all dated by a local month name. Tablets like this are the raw bookkeeping of the Akkadian state economy: textiles were a major state-controlled commodity, produced and tracked by weight through networks of officials and craft workers.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two top-quality wool garments and one weaver's-grade garment, weighing six minas in total, are recorded against Beli-mēn. Then come some more garments of the nig-lam type — the quantity and most of this section are broken away — with a weight that's also lost. The goods were handed over to (or received back from) a person or office called Ezi. The whole transaction was logged in a month called GAN-eš-gar-šugar, a local calendar name used at Adab.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 ḫaluam-garments, first-quality/head-type, 1 ḫaluam-garment, weaver's-type — their weight: 6 minas — (for) Beli-mēn. [n] nig-lam garments [...] [...] their weight: [n] minas — (from) Ezi, returned / received back. Month: 'GAN-eš-gar-šugar.'
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
2(asz@c) tug2 ha-la-um sag 1(asz@c) tug2 ha-la-um usz-bar ki-la2-bi 6(asz@c) ma-na be#-li2-men [n] tug2# nig2-lam2# [...] [...] x [...] ki#-la2-bi# [n] ma#-na# e2#-zi# szu-a gi4-a iti GAN2-esz2#-gar3#-szu#-gar#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 212. 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 223 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472512). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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