Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 232
About this tablet
A small, lenticular administrative tablet from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, dating to the Early Dynastic III period, roughly 2500–2350 BCE. It appears to record field measurements and a list of named individuals — likely farmers, officials, or recipients of land allocations — under the authority of a local temple or palace administration. The closing date formula, anchoring the document to 'the month of sheep-shearing in the year bricks were laid at Karkara,' is a rare Early Dynastic year-name that commemorates a specific construction event at a named location, helping modern scholars slot the tablet within the sequence of a ruler's reign. The tablet is too damaged in its upper half to recover the full transaction, but enough survives to show the routine machinery of land administration at one of ancient Sumer's major city-states.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records two quantities of one unit each — what exactly those units measured is lost where the clay has broken away. What follows establishes that the subject is a field measurement of some kind, and names a farmer alongside several other individuals: Mu-lah, Ur-gu, Pu-ta-pada-ra, and [An]-na-šum. Several lines in the middle are too damaged to read. The document is dated to the month of sheep-shearing in the year when bricks were laid at Karkara, and closes with a note that something was formally deposited or placed — likely a standard administrative seal on the record.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (unit) [...] 1 (unit) [...] [...] it is (a measure of) field person [...] farmer [+ uncertain sign] [mouth/gate sign]-[...]-[...] [...] [...] Mu-lah Ur-gu Pu-ta-pada-ra [An]-na-šum Month: sheep-shearing; Year: bricks of Karkara deposited/placed
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(asz@c) [...] 1(asz@c) [...] [...] GAN2#-kam# lu2#-[...] engar x KA-x-[x] [...] [...] mu-lah5 ur-gu# pu2#-ta#-pa3#-da-ra [an-na]-szum2 iti# ga2-udu-ur4# mu szeg12 karkara szub-ba-gar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 232. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252790) — 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.