Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 230
About this tablet
This is a small Old Akkadian-period administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya), part of the routine bookkeeping of a household or temple estate. It records two separate payments of half a shekel of silver each, carried by intermediaries and weighed out to two named smiths — Dada and Ur-Ninmug — apparently as payment connected to wagons or chariot parts made for the estate. Such texts are the mundane paper trail of Bronze Age craft economies: metal changing hands to compensate skilled labor.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Half a shekel of silver was brought by Nin-nigzu — described as goods already delivered — and paid out to Dada the smith, in connection with two wagons built for the estate; the rest of that line is too broken to read. In a second, parallel entry, another half shekel of silver was brought by Teni-shazu and paid out to Ur-Ninmug, presumably also a smith. Together the two entries record wages or payments in silver made to metalworkers for their work.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1/2 shekel of silver: Nin-nigzu — the delivered goods — he brought (it). Dada, the smith, (for) 2 wagons of the estate, [...] — it was weighed out to him. 1/2 shekel of silver: Teni-šazu brought (it). (To) Ur-Ninmug it was weighed out.
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
1/2(disz) ku3 gin2 nin-nig2-zu nig2-ru-ru mu-de6 da-da simug 2(asz@c) gigir2-e2 bu-dum-bi-x e-na-la2 1/2(disz) ku3 gin2 te-ni#?-sza3-zu mu-de6 ur-nin-mug e-na-la2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 230. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 007 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472530). 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.