Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 225
About this tablet
This is a short administrative memo from Adab in southern Mesopotamia, dating to the Akkadian period (roughly 2300–2200 BCE). It records a quantity of metal — a little over four mina, some of it described as being of 'Aratta' type or quality — weighed out and delivered to a smith named Dada, with a note about a measuring-rod used to check the weight, and the transaction dated by the local month name Šugar. Tablets like this are the raw bookkeeping of a palace or temple workshop: someone had to track exactly how much raw metal went into a craftsman's hands before he turned it into finished goods.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A record of metal issued to the smith Dada: four mina of muš-metal, plus a third of a mina of a special grade — possibly linked to the far-off city of Aratta — was weighed out to him, checked against a measuring rod marked to the fifteenth unit. The transaction is dated to the month of Šugar. In short: this is a receipt confirming that a specific weight of metal left the storehouse and reached the craftsman's workshop.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 mina of muš (a metal or material), 1/3 (mina) of Aratta-quality ..., ni-na — according to its measuring-rod: the 15th (unit) — Dada, the smith: it was weighed out to him. 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(asz@c) ma-na musz3 1/3(asz@c) sza aratta-a ni-na igi gesz-gid2-da-bi 1(u@c) 5(asz@c)-kam da-da simug e-na-la2 iti szu-gar#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 225. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 012 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472525). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.