Position in chronology
MAH 16291
About this tablet
A small land-survey memorandum from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), recording two parcels of farmland — one belonging to a god's estate (a temple holding), the other to a shepherd or a man named Udu — and then giving their combined total as 'the great field'. The arithmetic works out exactly: the two plots add up to the final figure. It is a glimpse of how Mesopotamian administrators measured and classified agricultural land, distinguishing hard, uncultivated ground from land already under the plough.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Roughly 27 hectares of hard, unbroken ground: that belongs to the god's estate. Another 13 or so hectares: that is the shepherd's (or Udu's) field. Together, about 40 hectares of land — just over 6⅔ bur and 5½ iku — make up what the surveyor calls 'the great field'. The two entries sum exactly to the total, so this is a surveyor's tally of adjoining parcels, noting that the land is uncultivated terrain.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 4 bur₃ 4 iku of field, kankal-land (hard, uncultivated ground), 2. (this is) the field of the god; 3. 2 bur₃ 1½ iku of field, 4. (this is) the field of U₂-du (the shepherd); 5. 6 bur₃ 5½ iku of field, kankal-land — 6. (this is) the great field.
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
4(bur3@c) 4(iku@c) GAN2 kankal# GAN2 dingir-ra-kam 2(bur3@c) 1(iku@c) 1/2(iku@c) GAN2 GAN2 u2-du-kam 6(bur3@c) 5(iku@c) 1/2(iku@c) GAN2 kankal# GAN2 mah
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAH 16291. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, Switzerland (P424135) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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Related sources
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.