Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 278
About this tablet
This is a short administrative roster from Adab, dating to the Akkadian (Sargonic) period, listing groups of female workers (geme2) counted out in small numbers and associated with named women. The names mix Akkadian forms (Mama-ummi, Aštar, Taniya, Sebetum) with Sumerian ones (Nin-adgal, Nig-banda, Nin-nigzu), reflecting the bilingual workforce typical of Sargonic-period southern Mesopotamian institutions. It is the kind of routine bookkeeping — probably a labor-gang or ration roster — that palace or temple scribes produced constantly to track female laborers assigned to household or agricultural work.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a tally sheet: it counts groups of female workers, entry by entry. Three workers are recorded for Mama-ummi, three for Geme-Enlil, three for Aštar, three for Taniya, two for Nin-adgal, two for Nig-banda, three for Nin-nigzu, and one for Sebetum. No commodity or purpose is stated — it reads as a straightforward headcount or work-assignment list, the kind of routine record an estate or temple office kept to track its female labor force.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3(asz@c) female workers (geme2) (for/under) Mama-ummi 3(asz@c) Geme-Enlil 3(asz@c) Aštar 3(asz@c) Taniya 2(asz@c) Nin-adgal 2(asz@c) Nig-banda 3(asz@c) Nin-nigzu 1(asz@c) Sebetum
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
3(asz@c) geme2 ma-ma-um-mi 3(asz@c) geme2-en-lil2 3(asz@c) asz-dar 3(asz@c) ta2-ni2-a 2(asz@c) nin-ad2-gal 2(asz@c) nig2-banda3 3(asz@c) nin-nig2-zu 1(asz@c) se-be2-tum
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 278. 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 041 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472578). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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