Position in chronology
HUCA 49, 016 & 051 14
About this tablet
An administrative land record from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), listing small plots of farmland measured in iku (roughly a third of a hectare each) assigned to named individuals — a temple administrator, a chief carpenter, and several others. The opening line notes a two-iku plot where donkeys were stationed, probably for plowing or threshing work. Documents like this show how an estate or temple parceled out its fields among its personnel, the ordinary bookkeeping behind Mesopotamian agriculture.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A field ledger: two iku of land were set aside where the donkeys were put to work, at the place called A-ka-du (perhaps a canal outlet). The rest of the land was divided up among named people — the temple administrator Nig-NI got the largest share at four and a quarter iku; U-u-ildu and the chief carpenter received two and a quarter iku each; Ur-ennezu got one iku; and Anna received three-quarters of an iku. In today's terms, each iku is about a third of a hectare of farmland.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2 iku of field — donkeys were stationed (there); 2. (at) A-ka-du (the canal-mouth installation); 3. 4 1/4 iku: Nig-NI, the temple administrator; 4. 2 1/4 iku: U-u-ildu; 5. 2 1/4 iku: the chief carpenter (nagar-gal); 6. 1 iku: Ur-ennezu; 7. 1/2 (and) 1/4 iku: Anna.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(iku@c) GAN2 ansze ba-gub a-ka-du3 4(iku@c) 1/4(iku@c) nig2-NI sanga 2(iku@c) 1/4(iku@c) u2#-u2-ildu3 2(iku@c) 1/4(iku@c) nagar-gal 1(iku@c) ur-en-ne2-zu 1/2(iku@c) 1/4(iku@c) an-na
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC) ?) — HUCA 49, 016 & 051 14. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: New York Public Library, New York, New York, USA (P342773) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.