Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 300
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from Adab, likely from the Akkadian period, recording a mašdaria — a customary gift or tribute offering, often livestock delivered to a temple or official on a recurring basis. It lists sheep allotted against named individuals, including a donkey-herder (Ur-Ašgi) and another man possibly named Ur-Šulpa'e, with an 'elder brother' (a kinship or title designation) also named in connection with the delivery. Such texts are common in the vast bureaucratic archives of Sargonic-period southern Mesopotamia, where herders and officials were tracked for the animals passing through their hands.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short receipt or tally recording sheep handed over as customary offerings (mašdaria). One sheep is charged to Ur-Ašgi, who tends the donkeys. Another sheep, apparently, goes to a man named Ur-Šulpa'e, though his name is partly broken away. A few more lines naming another person — someone called Lu-something — and a man identified as the 'elder brother' are damaged or too fragmentary to read fully. The tablet closes by labeling the whole transaction a mašdaria-offering, the standard term for this kind of periodic tribute payment in livestock.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sheep: Ur-Ašgi, the herder of donkeys. 1 sheep(?): Ur-Šulpa'e(?) — [......]: ..., Lu-... (name broken), the elder brother — mašdaria-offering.
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(asz@c) udu ur-asz8-gi4 sipa ansze# 1(asz@c) udu#? ur#?-szul#-[pa?]-e3#? [...]-x x lu2-x x-[x] szesz-gal masz2-da-ri#-[a]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 300. 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 320 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472600). 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.