Position in chronology
TMH 05, 060
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic field-allotment record from Nippur, roughly 2500 BCE. Two work gangs — twenty men under the foreman Lugal-ra and twenty-one under the foreman Inanna-ursag — each receive small plots of about 3 iku (just over a hectare), while each foreman gets a larger parcel of 1 bur. The scribe's total (8 bur 2 eše 3 iku) checks out exactly against the individual entries, showing how institutional land was parcelled out to labourers and their supervisors in one of Sumer's oldest cities.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Twenty men get 3 iku of field apiece, and their foreman Lugal-ra gets 1 bur. Another twenty-one men get 3 iku apiece, and their foreman Inanna-ursag gets 1 bur. All together that comes to 8 bur, 2 eše and 3 iku of land. The field belongs to (or is designated) Ama-ra. The back of the tablet is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine20 men, 3 iku of field each; 1 bur of field (for) the foreman Lugal-ra. 21 men, 3 iku of field each; 1 bur of field (for) the foreman Inanna-ursag. Total: 8 bur 2 eše 3 iku of field. Field (of) Ama-ra. (reverse: uninscribed)
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
2(u@c) lu2 3(iku@c) GAN2-ta 1(bur3@c) ugula lugal-ra 2(u@c) 1(asz@c) lu2 3(iku@c) GAN2-ta 1(bur3@c) ugula inanna-ur-sag szu-nigin2 8(bur3@c) 2(esze3@c) 3(iku@c) GAN2 GAN2 ama-ra
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 060. 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 (P020474) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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.