Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 293
About this tablet
This is a small Sargonic-period administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya), listing five laborers or craftsmen, each entered together with the overseer responsible for him. The summary line identifies all five collectively as 'fugitive men' — workers who had run away from their assigned labor duty. Texts like this belonged to the everyday bureaucracy of early Mesopotamian institutions (temple or palace households), which tracked corvée or dependent labor closely enough to note, name by name, who had absconded and under whose supervision they had been working.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a roster of five workers, each listed under the official who supervised him: Lugalka, overseer Dada; Duganli, overseer Ur-a; Amar-ashnan (the line is partly broken), overseer Kiku; Lu-ashgi (also partly broken), overseer presumably Dudu; and Ur-li, overseer Bur-gul. The tally at the bottom counts five craftsmen in total, and the record closes by noting that these are the men who fled — runaway laborers being accounted for, overseer by overseer.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (worker): Lugal-ka — overseer: Dada 1 (worker): Duga-ni — overseer: Ur-a [1 (worker)]: Amar-ašnan — overseer: Kiku [1 (worker)]: Lu-ašgi — [overseer]: Dudu 1 (worker): Ur-li — overseer: Bur-gul Total: 5 geškinti-workers (craftsmen) — they are fugitive men.
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) lugal-ka ugula da-da 1(asz@c) du11-ga-ni ugula ur-a2 [1(asz@c)] amar#-asznanx(TIR) ugula# ki#-ku3 [1(asz@c)] lu2#-asz8-gi4 [ugula] du-du 1(asz@c) ur#-li# ugula bur-gul# szunigin 5(asz@c) gesz-kin-ti lu2 zah2-a-me
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 293. 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 050 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472593). 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.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.