Position in chronology
WF 059
About this tablet
A land-allotment register from the city of Šuruppak in southern Iraq, written around 2600–2450 BCE during the Early Dynastic period — one of the oldest urban civilisations on record. A scribe has listed twelve named individuals alongside the area of agricultural field each holds, measured in iku (roughly a third of a hectare) and the larger eše₃ unit (six iku). The names range from pious compounds meaning 'servant of the protective spirit' to one borrowing the name of Anzû, the great storm-bird of Sumerian mythology. It is precisely the kind of routine administrative paperwork — who farms what, and how much — that kept a Mesopotamian city-state running and its scribes employed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a list of field allocations. Lugal-ezen holds one iku of land; Ur-[uncertain name]-HA holds one iku; Ur-lamma, Ur-nin-girinx, and E-kur-pa-e each hold three iku. Amar-šuba holds a full eše₃ — six iku. AN-sag-tuku holds four iku; AN-URUDU-si holds three. Il holds another full eše₃. Anzu holds three iku. At the bottom of the list, two smaller plots: A-NI-NI and Usz each hold just half an iku — unusually small parcels that may represent marginal or subdivided plots.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 iku of field — Lugal-ezen 1 iku — Ur-[…]-HA 3 iku — Ur-lamma 3 iku — Ur-nin-girinx 3 iku — E₂-kur-pa-e₃ 1 eše₃ — Amar-šuba₃ 4 iku — AN-sag-tuku 3 iku — AN-URUDU-si 1 eše₃ — Il 3 iku — Anzu ½ iku — A-NI-NI ½ iku — Usz
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(iku@c) GAN2 lugal-ezen 1(iku@c) ur-ESZ?-HA 3(iku@c) ur-lamma 3(iku@c) ur-nin-girinx 3(iku@c) e2-kur-pa-e3 1(esze3@c) amar-szuba3 4(iku@c) AN-sag-tuku 3(iku@c) AN-URUDU-si 1(esze3@c) il2 3(iku@c) anzu 1/2(iku@c) a-NI-NI 1/2(iku@c) USZ
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 059. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011016) — 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.