Position in chronology
Lippmann Coll 318
About this tablet
This is a small administrative account tracking sesame — or more precisely the sesame-oil plant, from which oil was pressed — delivered or measured out across three separate occasions. The repeated phrase 'a-ra2 n-kam' ('the nth time') shows a scribe tallying installments of the same commodity rather than a single transaction. The final broken lines name an individual, Lugal-[...], who appears to be the person responsible for bringing or delivering the goods. Texts like this are the everyday bookkeeping of institutional households in the Akkadian period, tracking staple commodities entering or leaving storage.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A record of sesame deliveries made in three rounds: first 5 gur and 3 ban2, then 1 gur 2 barig minus 1 ban2, and finally 2 barig, 1 ban2, and 5 sila3. A man named Lugal-[...] (the rest of his name is broken) is named at the end, apparently as the one who brought or delivered the sesame — though the verb itself is damaged and its exact reading uncertain.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 gur 3 ban2 sesame (sze-gesz-i3) — first time (a-ra2 1-kam). 1 gur 2 barig minus 1 ban2 sesame (sze-gesz-i3) — second time (a-ra2 2-kam). 2 barig 1 ban2 5 sila3 sesame (sze-gesz-i3) — third time (a-ra2 3-kam). Lugal-[...], [he] brought/delivered ([mu-de6?]).
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
5(asz@c) 3(ban2@c) sze#-gesz-i3 gur a-ra2 1(disz)-kam 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) la2 1(ban2@c) sze-gesz-i3 gur a-ra2 2(disz)-kam 2(barig@c) 1(ban2@c)# 5(disz) sila3 sze-gesz-i3 a-ra2 3(disz)-kam lugal-[...] mu-[de6?]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 318. 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 232 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from uncertain (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P472618). 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.