Position in chronology
AuOr 09, 150 6
About this tablet
A land register from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar, in the Diyala valley east of Baghdad) written during the Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2150 BCE. It lists parcels of farmland — measured in bur, eše, iku and sar, the standard Mesopotamian area units — each followed by the name of the man who held or was responsible for it. Several names are broken away where the clay is damaged. Documents like this are the backbone of ancient estate administration: they are how a palace, temple or local authority kept track of who worked which field and how much land each household controlled.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A survey list of farm plots with their holders. Mu-mu is entered for 3 bur 3 iku plus 3 sar of field; Su-ma-ilum for 3 bur 2 eše and 4½ iku; a man whose name ends in -ilī for 1 bur 1 eše. A further entry of about 1 bur heads a group of three more names, all of which are now damaged — one ending in -kani, another in -ilī. Then Lu-erin holds 1 bur 1 eše 1 iku, and Ilum-kal 1 bur 4½ iku. The tablet is an inventory, nothing more: acreage on the left, the man answerable for it on the right.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 3 bur 3 iku, *bur*-field, 3 sar — 2. Mu-mu. 3. 3 bur 2 eše 4½ iku of field — 4. Su-ma-ilum (su₄-ma-dingir). 5. 1 bur 1 eše — [...]-ilī. 6. [n +] 1 bur, *bur*-field — 7. [......]-x, 8. [......]-kani, 9. [......]-ilī. 10. 1 bur 1 eše 1 iku of field — 11. Lu-erin (lu₂-erin₂). 12. 1 bur 4½ iku — Ilum-kal (dingir-kal).
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
3(bur3@c) 3(iku@c) bur GAN2 3(asz) sar mu-mu 3(bur3@c) 2(esze3@c) 4(iku@c) 1/2(iku@c) GAN2 su4-ma-dingir 1(bur3@c) 1(esze3@c) x-i3-li2 [n] 1(bur3@c)# bur# GAN2 [...]-x [...]-ka#-ni# [...]-i3-li2 1(bur3@c) 1(esze3@c) 1(iku@c) GAN2 lu2-erin2 1(bur3@c) 4(iku@c) 1/2(iku@c) dingir-kal
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — AuOr 09, 150 6. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Montserrat Museum, Barcelona, Spain (P212575) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
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.