Position in chronology
TMH 05, 059
About this tablet
A land-and-harvest account from Nippur in the Early Dynastic period (around 2600–2500 BCE), one of the oldest layers of Sumerian administration. It lists three plots of farmland with the barley each owes or yielded, adds them up to 200 lidga (a large capacity measure, roughly 48,000 litres in total), and assigns the whole to the estate of a man named Ašda-ma-il as rent from leased fields. It shows a landholding household collecting grain from tenant farmers — the economics of early Mesopotamian agriculture in miniature.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Three fields are listed with the barley due from each. A field of about 2 bur 2 eše, belonging to E-ga-nigin, owes 60 lidga of barley. A field of 5 bur 1 eše, belonging to Nin-Isin, owes 102 lidga. A field of 2 bur — its owner's name is broken away — owes 38 lidga. Altogether that comes to 200 lidga of barley, the rent from the leased plough-land. A number of oxen are also noted, though the figure is damaged. All of this belongs to the household of Ašda-ma-il.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 2 bur 2 eše of field; its barley: 60 lidga. Field (of) E-ga-nigin. 5 bur 1 eše of field; its barley: 102 (lidga). Field of Nin-Isin. 2 bur of field; its barley: [38 (lidga)]. Field [...]. Reverse Its total: 200 (3 sixties and 20) lidga of barley — barley of the rented (plough-)fields. x oxen. (Property) of the house of Ašda-ma-il.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(bur3@c) 2(esze3@c) GAN2 sze-be6 1(gesz2@c) lid2-ga GAN2 e-ga nigin2 5(bur3@c) 1(esze3@c) GAN2 sze-be6 1(gesz2@c) 4(u@c) 2(asz@c) GAN2 nin-isin2-kam# 2(bur3@c) GAN2# sze-be6 [3(u@c) 8(asz@c)] GAN2 [...] szu-nigin2-be6 3(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) sze lid2-ga sze apin-la2 x gu4 e2 asz2-da-ma-il-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 059. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Hilprecht Collection, University of Jena, Germany (P020473) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.