Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 253
About this tablet
This is a short administrative memorandum from the Sargonic-period city of Adab, recording disbursements of animal hides — goat and sheep skins — for specific purposes and to named individuals. Texts like this belonged to a temple or palace household's leather-working operation, tracking raw hides destined for tanning, waterproofing with bitumen, or delivery to craftsmen and officials such as Ur-Enlil and Dugan. It is a small fragment of the vast bookkeeping apparatus that kept Mesopotamian institutional economies running, one hide at a time.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The record lists hide allocations: twenty goat hides went to (a person or place called) Ummu, and ten sheep hides were set aside for a type of leather called 'erina.' A man named Ur-Enlil is noted, possibly in connection with a craft or measuring role ('susi'). One more sheep hide is recorded as bitumen-treated leather, meant to be filled or finished. Finally, two hides of an unspecified material are recorded for a person or place named Dugan. In short, this is a tally of leather issued from storage for various workers and purposes.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 20 hides of goat(s), 2. for Ummu (EDIN.A); 3. 10 hides of sheep, 4. for e-ri-na-leather; 5. Ur-Enlil, 6. (the) susi(-worker/measurer)(?); 7. 1 hide of sheep, 8. bitumen-treated leather, 9. to be filled(?); 10. 2 hides of [...], 11. Dugan.
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
2(u@c) kusz masz2 ummux(|EDIN.A|)-sze3 1(u@c) kusz udu kusz e-rix(|BU.BU|)-na-sze3 ur-en-lil2 su#-si# 1(asz@c) kusz# udu kusz esir4-ra si-si-ge4#-[de3] 2(asz@c) kusz# [...] du10-gan
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 253. 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 205 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472553). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
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