Position in chronology
TMH 05, 062
About this tablet
A small field-allotment record from Nippur in the Early Dynastic period (mid-third millennium BCE), listing plots of arable land measured in bur, eše and iku (a bur is roughly 6.5 hectares) and assigned to named individuals. After a break, the tablet tallies smaller parcels numbered as second, third and fourth, ending with the Akkadian-style name Isarum. It shows how temple or palace administrators in Nippur tracked the distribution of farmland among dependents, and hints at the mixed Sumerian-Akkadian population of the city.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ur-Enlil gets five bur of field. Lugal-mah gets one bur and three iku, plus an amount now lost. Ur-tur gets two bur. Lu-Ezida gets one bur and one eše. Another person, whose name is broken away, gets one bur. Then the list switches to numbered parcels: an illegible area as the second, two eše as the third, two iku as the fourth. The last name recorded is Isarum. Parts of the tablet are broken, so some entries are incomplete.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 bur of field: Ur-Enlil. [...] 1 bur 3 iku: Lugal-mah(?). 2 bur: Ur-tur. 1 bur 1 eše: Lu-Ezida. 1 bur: [...]. [...]: the 2nd (parcel/class). 2 eše: the 3rd (parcel/class). 2 iku: the 4th (parcel/class). Isarum.
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
5(bur3@c) GAN2 ur-en-lil2 [x] 1(bur3@c)#? 3(iku@c) lu:gal-mah? 2(bur3@c) ur-tur 1(bur3@c) 1(esze3@c) lu-e2-zi-da# 1(bur3@c) [...] x 2(disz@t)-kam# 2(esze3@c) 3(disz@t)-kam 2(iku@c) 4(disz@t)-kam i-sar-um
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 062. 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 (P020476) — 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.