Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 226
About this tablet
This is a small administrative memorandum from the Sargonic-period city of Adab, recording the disbursement of metal — minas of an unidentified material and shekel-weights of copper — to two named individuals, Dudu and Dada. Such tablets were routine bookkeeping: an unnamed palace or temple official issuing raw metal, likely for craft production or wages, with the recipient's name and a terse 'it was given to him' standing in for a full receipt. The repetition of Dada's name with a second, smaller allotment of copper suggests two separate transactions recorded on the same tablet, perhaps issued on different occasions or for different purposes.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet logs two issues of metal from an unnamed official's stores. First, four minas of an unclear material and two-thirds of a mina of something associated with Aratta (or a person/place called Nina) were handed over — the record names Dudu and then Dada as involved, closing with 'it was given to him.' Separately, nine units of copper worth a third of a shekel each were also given to Dada, again closed with the same formula. In short: a short receipt or issue-voucher for metal rations to two workers or officials, Dudu and Dada, written by an anonymous administrator at Adab.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 minas of muš-[...], 2/3 mina of Aratta-a-nina(?), (to) Dudu, (to) Dada — it was given to him. 9 sugan-units of copper, at one-third shekel [each], (to) Dada — it was given to him.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
4(asz@c) ma#-[na] musz3#[] 2/3(asz@c) aratta#-a# ni#-na du#-du# da#-da# e-na-szum2 9(disz) su3-gan uruda gin2 igi 3(disz)-gal2 da-da e-na-szum2#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 226. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 311 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472526). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.