Lippmann Coll 243

About this tablet

This is a small Old Akkadian-period administrative memorandum, probably from Adab, recording the distribution of quantities of an unidentified commodity or item called 'mud' to a short list of named individuals. Such tablets are the everyday bookkeeping of institutional households in third-millennium Mesopotamia — a scribe jotting down who received how much of something, closing with the standard verb 'he gave' to mark the transaction as complete. The exact nature of the commodity and even some of the personal names remain uncertain because the surviving signs are terse and without further context.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

This is a brief disbursement record. It lists: 1 unit of some item called 'mud' for a person named Gigir-nigšu; 2 units for Dada; 4 units for a person whose name is only partly legible (U?); and 4 more units for another partly legible name (Girizi?). The tablet then names a few more people — An-gu-[...], Ur-Inanna, and Lu-edin-gur — who may be additional recipients, witnesses, or the responsible officials, before closing with the standard formula confirming that the goods 'were given' to them.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

1 (unit) mud — Gigir-nigšu (?) 2 (units) — Dada 4 (units) — U(?) 4 (units) — Girizi(?) An-gu-[x x] Ur-Inanna Lu-edin-gur he gave (it) to him/them (mu-na-šum2).

Indicative reading — translated without a photograph. Generated from the transliteration alone, without examining the original. Read it as an accessible first taste, not as a verified catalogue entry.

Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.

Transliteration

1(asz@c) mud gigir2-nig2#-szu
2(asz@c) da#-da#
4(asz@c) u3#?
4(asz@c) giri3#-zi#?
an-gu2-[x x]
ur-inanna
lu2-edin#-gur#
mu-na-szum2

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 243. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: CL 133 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472543). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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AoF 30, 238,1