Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/1, pl. 008, 1928-439
About this tablet
An administrative tablet from Early Dynastic Kish (modern Tell Uhaimir, Iraq), dating to roughly 2600–2400 BCE. The surviving text divides into two sections: a series of at least six field or land entries (GAN2), and below them, five quantities of silver measured in shekels — including fractional amounts such as one-third and one-half. The left side of the tablet is broken away, so the names of persons, institutions, or specific qualifiers attached to each entry are lost. Despite the damage, the document gives a clear glimpse of Early Dynastic bookkeeping: land and precious metal tracked together in a single compact clay ledger, probably by a temple or palace scribe at Kish.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives of this tablet records two kinds of assets. First, six entries each referring to a field or land parcel — but the left side of the clay is broken off, so we cannot tell whose fields these were or what exactly was being noted. Below the field entries, the scribe listed five silver amounts: one-third of a shekel, ten shekels, one shekel, half a shekel, and one final entry that is too damaged to complete. Whether the silver represents payments, allocations, or receipts, the tablet does not say — that information was on the lost left side.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] field [...] field [...] field [...] field [...] field [...] field 1/3 (unit) — silver [...] 10 — silver, shekel(?) [...] 1(?) — silver, shekel [...] 1/2 (unit) — silver, shekel [...] 1 [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] GAN2# [...] GAN2 [...] GAN2 [...] GAN2 [...] GAN2 [...] GAN2 1/3(disz@c) ku3# [...] 1(u@c) ku3# gin2#? [...] 1(asz@c)? ku3 gin2# [...] 1/2(disz@c) ku3# gin2# [...] 1(asz@c) [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — AAICAB 1/1, pl. 008, 1928-439. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P212416) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.