Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 305
About this tablet
This small tablet from Adab is a Sargonic-period letter-order — a short administrative directive relaying a governor's instruction down the chain of command. The governor names three men as smiths and orders the scribe Mes-zi to see that they take charge of a quantity of the king's bronze for a work assignment. Texts like this survive in some numbers from Adab and illuminate how a provincial governor mobilized skilled labor and controlled royal metal stocks under the Akkadian empire.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Three men — one whose name is only partly preserved (ending in '-an'), Mizati, and Uluga — are listed as smiths, one unit each. The governor has given an order: 'Tell Mes-zi the scribe: have the smiths take the king's bronze and get to work on the job — put it in their hands.' In short, this is a brief chain-of-command memo authorizing named craftsmen to receive royal bronze for a specific task.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (unit): ...-an, 1 (unit): Mizati, 1 (unit): Uluga — (they are) smiths. The governor has ordered (as follows): "(To) Mes-zi, the scribe, speak! The smiths (are to work) the king's bronze for the task — let it be worked; let it be placed in (their) hands."
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)# x-x-an 1(asz@c) mi#-za-ti 1(asz@c) u-lu5-ga simug-me ensi2-ke4 na-be2-a mes-zi dub-sar-ra u3-na-du11 simug-ne zabar lugal kin-sze3 al ak# szu# he2-us2-e
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 305. 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 183 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472605). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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