Position in chronology
AoF 41, 010-014
About this tablet
A land register from ancient Shuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), written around 2600–2500 BCE. It lists five named parcels of agricultural land — each identified by area and a local field name, many tied to earthen mounds or irrigation features — all held by a man named Ur-lugal-gub. A closing entry records that five brothers received their shares as allotments, and a separate field is noted as the household allotment of a person named Gišgal-si. Documents like this are among the earliest written property records in human history, showing Sumerian administrators already managing land distribution with precision across a large civic territory.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Eight bur of the gešur field. Two bur and one eše at the KA-banda plot. Three bur and one eše at the sal₄-la mound. Three bur and one eše at the al-lu₂ furrow. Two bur and one eše at the Nam-gi mound. All of these are the fields of Ur-lugal-gub. Five brothers — their allotted shares — have been paid out. And one field, issued as a household allotment, now belongs to Gišgal-si.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine8 bur of field — the gešur field. 2 bur 1 eše of field — KA-banda. 3 bur 1 eše [?] of field — the sal₄-la mound. 3 bur 1 eše of field — the al-lu₂ furrow. 2 bur 1 eše of field — the Nam-gi mound. Fields of Ur-lugal-gub. 5 brothers — allotments — were disbursed. Field — household allotment — belonging to Gišgal-si.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
8(bur3@c) GAN2 gesz ur3-ra 2(bur@c) 1(esze3@c) GAN2 KA-banda3 3(bur3@c) 1(esze3@c)# GAN2 du6 sal4-la 3(bur@c) 1(esze3@c) GAN2 sur3 al-lu2 2(bur@c) 1(esze3@c) GAN2 du6 nam-gi GAN2 ur-lugal-gub-kam szesz 5(disz@t) nig2-ba ba-de6 GAN2 e nig2-ba giszgal-si-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — AoF 41, 010-014. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Museum Forum der Völker (Völkerkundemuseum der Franziskaner), Werl, Germany (P416134) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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.