Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 034
About this tablet
A land-allocation record from the ancient Sumerian city of Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), dating to roughly 2600–2350 BCE. A temple or palace scribe measured out parcels of agricultural land in iku (each roughly a third of a hectare) and assigned them to named individuals — Lugal-kal, Ur-nu, Lugal-ildu, and others whose names are partly damaged. Documents like this one are the administrative backbone of the Sumerian economy: they show how an institution parceled out its fields among workers, tenants, or junior officials. The upper-right corner of the tablet is badly eroded, leaving one or two entries only partially legible.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is a field-distribution ledger. The first entry allocates 1 iku and 2 sar of land — perhaps to an establishment called the 'house of life,' or to a person of that name; the sign is slightly damaged. Next, Lugal-kal receives 3 iku; Ur-nu receives 3 iku; someone whose name begins with a damaged sign followed by '-ad-gal' receives another 3 iku. A person listed as U-nu-NI-NI appears without a land measure recorded — the number may have been broken away. Two further entries of 1 iku and 2 iku survive but the names attached to them are lost. Finally, Lugal-ildu receives 2 iku. The rest of the tablet is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 iku 2 sar [damaged sign?] (for) E2-zi[#] ('house of life' or personal name) 3 iku — Lugal-kal 3 iku — Ur-nu 3 iku — [x]-ad-gal (area lost/unwritten) — U-nu-NI-NI [n] 1 iku — [...] 2 iku — [...] 2 iku — Lugal-ildu
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(iku@c) 2(disz@t) sar# [x?] e2-zi# 3(iku@c) lugal-kal 3(iku@c)# ur-nu 3(iku@c)# x-ad2-gal2 () u3-nu-NI-NI [n] 1(iku@c)# [...] 2(iku@c) [...] 2(iku@c) lugal-ildu3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 034. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252784) — 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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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.