Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 217
About this tablet
This is a small storehouse account from Adab in southern Iraq, dating to the Akkadian period (roughly 2300–2100 BCE). It records two batches of textiles — twenty-one garments of one type and twenty of another — noted as being on deposit and then handed over to a man named Lugal-ka, with the transaction dated by month. Tablets like this were the routine paperwork of a temple or palace storehouse, tracking cloth as a form of wealth and wages in an economy where textiles were among the most valuable manufactured goods.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The storehouse records 21 níg-lá garments and 20 šagadu-garments — the latter counted as property or assets — along with a separate batch of garments belonging to a man named Kimura. All of it is logged as on deposit in the storehouse. The garments were then handed over to a man named Lugal-ka. The transaction is dated to the harvest month.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine21 níg-lá garments, 20 šagadu-garments — property/assets, garments of Kimura — they are on deposit (on record). To Lugal-ka he gave (them). Month: "Harvest (of grain)".
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(u@c) 1(asz@c) tug2 nig2-la2 2(u@c) tug2 sza3-ga-du3 nig2-su-a tug2 ki-mu-ra-ka mu-gal2-am3 lugal-ka-ra e-na-szum2 iti sze-|SZE.SZE|-kin-am3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 217. 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 029 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472517). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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