Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 229
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from Adab recording quantities of metal — measured in mana and shekels — issued to a smith for metalworking, apparently for producing a heavy-bladed axe. The final lines name the smith, AxKU3-pa-e3, and record that the metal was 'weighed out to him,' a standard formula in Sargonic-period craft-supply accounts. Such texts document the everyday logistics of Bronze Age metallurgy: raw or refined metal tracked by weight, allocated to named artisans working for an institution (temple or palace workshop).
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The record notes two batches of metal handed over for smithing: just under one full mana (53 shekels) of one grade — described as 'strong' raw material — and one mana ten shekels of a second, cleaned or polished grade. Two more lines recording quantities are broken and lost. What survives afterward specifies the purpose: metal for a heavy, thick-bladed axe, entered as part of a running total. It was issued to the smith AxKU3-pa-e3, and the tablet closes with the standard notation that the metal was weighed out and delivered into his hands.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 mana less 7 shekels of 'strong seed' (raw metal?), 1 mana 10 shekels of polished/cleansed muš-metal, [......] [......] for the thick-necked axe (ḫazi), for the total account (sagšu), (to) AxKU3-pa-e3, the smith — it was weighed out to him.
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
1(asz@c) ma-na la2 7(disz@t) gin2 numun kal-ga 1(asz@c) ma-na 1(u) gin2 musz3 luh-ha [...] [...] ha#-zi gu2 gur4-sze3 sagszu-sze3 |AxKU3|-pa-e3 simug e#-na-la2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 229. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 120 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472529). 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.