Position in chronology
BIN 08, 065
About this tablet
This is an Early Dynastic (roughly 2600–2350 BCE) land survey from southern Mesopotamia — a working list of individual field plots, each given its size in the standard area units of the day (iku and eše, still visible as the box-and-wedge number signs on the tablet), paired with the name of the person who held or worked it. Several of those people carry occupational titles — a gala (lamentation-priest), an ugula (overseer), and a sipa (shepherd) — suggesting this was an institutional estate, likely temple land, being parceled out or accounted for among its dependents. Texts like this are the bureaucratic backbone of the earliest Sumerian city-states: not literature or myth, but the plot-by-plot record-keeping that let a large household track who farmed what.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a field-by-field land ledger. A plot of about 2 1/4 iku called Ešba is charged to a man named Ama-bara-abzu. A cluster of smaller parcels — a bit under 3 iku, then 3 1/2, then 3 1/4 — belongs to Sidu. Ur-Namnun holds one eše-plus-4-iku plot; Ur-Tulbaza, who works as a gala-priest, holds another. A larger parcel of two eše plus 4 iku goes to a man whose name is partly illegible ('Lugal-a-...'). Magur, an overseer, is recorded with a plot and its measured 'long side.' Enlila, who holds the title gusur, is credited with several sub-measurements — length, a grain figure, and a running total of 4 1/2 iku. Finally, Amar-gula the shepherd is assigned just under 5 iku, again with grain and length figures attached. Altogether it reads like a page from an estate's land registry, tracking parcel sizes and the workers responsible for them.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 1/4 iku — field: Ešba(?) — (for) Ama-bara-abzu 3 iku less 1/4 iku; 3 1/2 iku; 3 1/4 iku — (for) Sidu 1 eše + 4 iku: Ur-Namnun 1 eše + 1 1/2 iku: Ur-Tulbaza, the gala-priest 2 eše + 4 iku: Lugal-a-[...] 1 eše + 2 1/2 iku(?), the long side (lisz-us2) (for) Magur, the overseer 2 1/2 iku, long side; 1 1/2 iku, grain(?), 4 units; total: 4 1/2 iku, long side (for) Enlila, the gusur-official 5 iku less 1/4 iku; 3 grain-units; 2 long-side units (for) Amar-gula, the shepherd
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(iku@c) 1/4(iku@c) GAN2# esz16-ba? ama-bara2-abzu 3(iku@c) la2 1/4(iku@c) 3(iku@c) 1/2(iku@c) 3(iku@c) 1/4(iku@c) si-du3 1(esze3@c) 4(iku@c) ur-nam2-nun 1(esze3@c) 1(iku@c) 1/2(iku@c) ur-tul2-ba-za gala 2(esze3@c)# 4(iku@c) lugal-a2-REC107 1(esze3@c) 2(iku@c) 1/2(iku@c)? lisz us2 ma2-gur8 ugula? 2(iku@c) 1/2(iku@c) lisz us2 1(iku@c) 1/2(iku@c) sze 4 (asz@c) pap 4(iku@c) 1/2(iku@c) us2 en-lil2-la2 gu:sur 5(iku@c) la2 1/4(iku@c) 3(asz@c) sze 2(asz@c) lisz us2 amar-gu2-la2 sipa
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — BIN 08, 065. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Nies Babylonian Collection, Yale Babylonian Collection, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (P221562) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
Related tablets
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.