Position in chronology
TMH 05, 069
About this tablet
A land-allotment record from Nippur in the Early Dynastic period (mid-third millennium BCE), among the oldest administrative tablets from that city. Parcels of agricultural land, measured in bur and eše (one bur is roughly 6.5 hectares), are assigned to named individuals and an official, the vizier, with one larger plot also noted for the barley it yields. The closing line assigns the whole to the domain of a goddess, Nin-isina, showing how temple estates were parcelled out as subsistence plots to their dependants.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Land register: Baza holds a field of 1 bur and 1 eše. The vizier of An holds 1 eše of field. The son of Lugal-idmu holds 1 eše. Kišum holds 2 bur and 2 eše of field, which yields 10 lidga of barley. Lugal-ša, son of Lugal-lu, holds a subsistence plot of 1 bur and 1 eše. All of this is field belonging to the goddess Nin-isina. The back of the tablet is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse, col. i 1 bur 1 eše (of) field: Baza. 1 eše (of) field: the vizier of An. 1 eše: the son of Lugal-idmu. 2 bur 2 eše (of) field: Kišum; its barley: 10 lidga. Col. ii 1 bur 1 eše subsistence plot: Lugal-ša, son of Lugal-lu. (It is) the field of Nin-isin[a]. Reverse: uninscribed.
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
1(bur3@c) 1(esze3@c) GAN2 ba-za 1(esze3@c) GAN2 sukkal AN 1(esze3@c) dumu lu:gal-i7-mu 2(bur3@c) 2(esze3@c) GAN2 ki-szum sze-be6 1(u@c) lid2-ga 1(bur3@c) 1(esze3@c) szuku lugal-sza3 dumu lugal-lu2 GAN2 nin-isin2-[kam]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 069. 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 (P020483) — 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.