Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 221
About this tablet
This is a routine textile-inventory tablet from the Sargonic-period (Akkadian Empire era) administration at Adab, a Sumerian city in southern Iraq. It records quantities of finished and used garments — including a specialized cloth called šagadu — held in two places: a storehouse called the 'House of the Scepter' and the workshop of a chief fuller (a launderer/finisher of cloth), with the entry closed out by naming a weaver and dating the tally to the barley-harvest month. Tablets like this are the paperwork of a textile industry that was one of the great state-run enterprises of early Mesopotamia, tracking cloth as it moved between weavers, fullers, and central stores.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Inventory count: 22 'deficit-type' garments, and 18 šagadu-cloth garments (finished goods) are on hand in the House of the Scepter storeroom. Separately, 13 more deficit-type garments and 20 šagadu-cloth garments are on hand with the chief fuller. The account also notes an old garment still to be weighed in, and is attributed to a weaver. Recorded in the month of the barley harvest.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine22 nig-la2 garments, 18 (20 less 2) šagadu-garments, nig-su-a type, old garment(s) to be weighed/balanced — (recorded) in the House of the Scepter: there is (this much). 13 nig-la2 garments, 20 šagadu-garments, nig-su-a type, with the chief fuller — is present (with him). Weaver. Month: "Harvest" (barley-cutting).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
2(u@c) 2(asz@c) tug2 nig2-[la2] 2(u@c) la2 2(asz@c) tug2 sza3-ga#-du3 nig2-su-a tug2 libir la2-dam e2 gidri-ka mu-gal2 1(u@c) 3(asz@c) tug2 nig2-la2 2(u@c) tug2 sza3-ga-du3 nig2-su-a lu2 azlag2-gal-da# e-da-gal2 usz-bar iti sze-sag11-[ku5]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 221. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 238 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472521). 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.