Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 231
About this tablet
This is a small administrative receipt from Adab (modern Bismaya) in southern Iraq, dating to the Akkadian (Sargonic) period, roughly the 23rd century BCE. It records a quantity of garlic — a little over twelve units, weighed out at just over three minas — that was returned or accounted for in connection with a man named Dada, identified as a smith. Such tablets were routine bookkeeping: temple or workshop administrators tracked commodities issued to or reclaimed from craftsmen, down to the fraction of a shekel, and dated the transaction by month for the institution's annual records.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Twelve and a third units of garlic, weighing three minas and thirty-five and a half shekels in total, were checked back in — received and accounted for — from Dada the smith. The transaction was recorded in the harvest month.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine12 1/3 (units of) garlic — its weight: 3 minas, 35 1/2 shekels. Returned to hand (received/accounted for). Dada, the smith. Month: ŠE-ŠE-kin (harvest month).
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(u@c) 2(asz@c) szum 1/3(asz@c) ki-la2-bi 3(asz@c) ma-na 3(u) 5(disz) 1/2(disz) gin2 szu-a gi4-a da-da simug-kam iti sze-|SZE.SZE|-kin-am3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 231. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CL 014 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472531). 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.