Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 220
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from Adab, dating to the Akkadian period, recording a batch of finished textiles — nearly 90 garments of several named types — that were reconciled or handed over in connection with a fuller (a cloth-finisher or launderer). Such tablets were routine bookkeeping in the textile workshops that were among the largest state-run industries of early Mesopotamia, tracking cloth through production, washing/finishing, and final accounting. The month name anchors it to a specific point in the local Adab calendar.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a stock count from a textile workshop: 44 second-grade fine garments, 5 more fine garments associated with weaving, 20 garments of one type and 20 of another — 89 pieces of cloth in all. The batch has been checked back in and accounted for, and it's recorded under the responsibility of the fuller (the worker who washed or finished cloth). The record is dated to the month called Šugar.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine44 nig-lam garments, standard (second) grade, 5 nig-lam garments, weaver-quality, 20 šagadu garments, 20 šagedab garments, total: 89 assorted garments, returned/accounted for, belonging to the fuller. Month: 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
4(u@c) 4(asz@c) tug2 nig2-lam2 us2 5(asz@c) tug2 nig2-lam2 usz-<bar?> 2(u@c) tug2 sza3-ga-du3 2(u@c) tug2 sza3-ge-dab6 szunigin 1(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) [la2 1(asz@c)] tug2 hi-a# szu-a gi4-a lu2 azlag2-kam iti szu-gar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 220. 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 198 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472520). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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