Position in chronology
HSS 10, 021
About this tablet
A tiny surveyor's memorandum from Gasur (the later Nuzi, in northern Iraq) in the Old Akkadian period, around 2300 BCE. A scribe records the width and length of a small plot of land and then states the computed area — about 330 square meters, roughly a large garden plot. Texts like this are the working notes behind the great land registers of the Sargonic administration, and they show practical geometry in daily use more than a millennium before Greek mathematics.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A field-measurement note: the plot is 2 rods less 2 cubits wide (about 11 meters) on its north sides, and 5 rods less 1 cubit long (about 29.5 meters), the length being the same on both sides. That works out, the scribe says, to an area of 9 and a quarter sar — roughly 330 square meters. In short: a surveyor jotting down the dimensions of a small parcel and its calculated area.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2 ninda less 2 cubits — (the) north (width): 2 (sides); 2. 5 ninda less 1 cubit — the length, (which) is equal (on both sides); 3. its field(-area): 9 1/4 sar.
Our translation engine — Fable 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(disz) nindax(DU) la2 2(disz) kusz3 mer 2(disz) 5(disz) nindax(DU) la2 1(disz) kusz3 us2 i3-sa2 a-sza3-bi 9(disz) sar igi-4(disz)-gal2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — HSS 10, 021. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (P213287) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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