The ancient city of Adab (modern Bismaya) was heavily plundered in the 1990s in the aftermath of the 1991 war and the Western embargo on Iraq. Several hundred tablets from these lootings have been identified as belonging to one coherent group. Considering the tablet format, layout and palaeography, this group has been labeled „Middle Sargonic“, and prosopography has allowed a dating to the early years of king Narām-Suen of Akkade (2261-2206 BCE; Molina 2014: 29-32). The date assigned to this group, ca. 2270-2240 BCE, may be off by +/- 10 years within the Middle Chronology (as proposed by Sallaberger/Schrakamp 2015).

Around 600 tablets have been returned to the Iraq Museum, Baghdad, namely the tablets from the former Lippman collection already in 2014 (292 items in SCTRAH = Molina 2014) and those from the Cornell University in 2021 (285 items published in CUSAS 20 = Pomponio/Visicato 2015, nos. 98-110 in CUSAS 23 = Bartash 2013). Another circa 200 tablets have remained in various private collections (nos. 263-319 in CUSAS 35  = Bartash 2017, and others), including the first group to be published and identified (nos. 65-193 in TCBI = Pomponio/Visicato/Westenholz 2006, many of them republished in CUSAS 26).

The „Middle Sargonic“ style characterizes tablets from Adab, at the period of the province’s governors Šarru-ālī and Lugal-ayaĝu who ruled during the early part of Narām-Suen’s long reign (2261-2206 BCE; Molina 2014: 28-32 with earlier references). These gouvernors followed the early Sargonic governor Meskigala, who ruled under Sargon and was defeated in the rebellion against Sargon’s son Rimuš who may have followed Sargon (2324-2285 BCE) directly or not (Pomponio 2015: 193; Sallaberger/Schrakamp 2015: 95 and 105; Pomponio/Visicato 2015: 2-3; Schrakamp 2020b: 627). The end of this group of tablets most plausibly coincides with the Great Rebellion of the Babylonian cities against Narām-Suen which may have occurred in the twenties of his long rule (Pomponio 2015: 193; Sallaberger/Schrakamp 2015: 109 with earlier literature).

The Middle Sargonic tablets from Adab concentrate on secondary production (textiles, craftsmen, food production) and include expenditures as gifts and persons on trips, often connected to the capital Akkade. They „form a clearly interconnected whole. This means that they were distinct but clearly related offices, storage facilities and workshops, whose activities were also integrated from an administrative point of view “ (Molina 2014: 34). Therefore, the Middle Sargonic tablets from Adab represent the remains of an archive that once documented the activities of the province’s governor.