Position in chronology
Adab 0692
About this tablet
A field-survey account from Sargonic Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), about 2300 BCE. Each line credits a named man with a length of canal embankment — 20, 51, 51 rods and so on — and the scribe then totals the work at 615 ninda, roughly three and a half kilometres of levee, all of it belonging to a tract called the 'House of the Great Pigs.' Two officials close the record: En-anna-tum, and the commissioner (maškim) Lugal-ša-za-[...], who answered for the job. It is a snapshot of the irrigation corvée that kept Mesopotamian fields alive, with responsibility assigned person by person.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The list gives lengths of embankment assigned to individual men: 20 rods for the first (name lost), then 51, 51 for a man whose name began Lu-, 51 for Ur-sa, 50 for a man called Gissu, 50 for someone ending -tur; several entries are broken away. The scribe totals it: 615 ninda of levee, on the field known as the House of the Great Pigs. The account is filed under En-anna-tum, with Lugal-ša-za-[...] named as the responsible commissioner. The opening lines and parts of the names are damaged beyond recovery.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 20 [...] nu-[...] 51 [...] 51 Lu-[...] 51 Ur-sa 50 [...] Gissu 50 [...]-tur Reverse Total: 615 ninda (of) levee. Field of the House of the Great Pigs. En-anna-tum; its commissioner: Lugal-ša-za-[...]
Our translation engine — Opus 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
2(u@c)#? [...] nu-[...] 5(u@c) 1(asz@c)#? [...] 5(u@c) 1(asz@c) lu2#-[...] 5(u@c) 1(asz@c) ur-sa6 5(u@c) [...] gissu# 5(u@c)#? [...]-tur szunigin 1(gesz'u@c) 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) e nindax(DU) GAN2 e2 szah2 gu-la en-an-na-tum2 maszkim-[bi?] lugal-sza3-za3#-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0692. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P217491) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.