Position in chronology
AAS 024
About this tablet
A field-labor allocation tablet from Umma in southern Iraq, dated to Šu-Suen year 5 of the Third Dynasty of Ur — roughly 2033 BCE. It calculates the worker-days owed by a labor gang for two types of agricultural or construction work on a named field, applying a standard formula: area multiplied by work-rate equals total days obligated, arriving at 150 days. The tablet was sealed and written by Ur-emah, scribe and son of Dada, one of the literate administrators who kept the Ur III bureaucratic machine running. The date formula anchors the document to Šu-Suen's great military engineering project, the 'Martu Wall,' built across the empire's northwestern frontier to hold back Amorite incursions.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A field of 15 iku was assessed for two distinct labor obligations: bundling work, charged at a rate of ¾ iku per worker-day, and rafter-wood work at three times the base workload, charged at 4½ iku per worker-day. Adding it all up, the assigned work gang owes 150 days of labor. The field's name and the overseer's name are both partially lost to damage on the tablet's broken left edge. The document was sealed by Ur-emah, scribe, son of Dada, and was written in the year following Šu-Suen the king's construction of the Amorite Wall — the fifth year of his reign.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[2 eše] 3 iku of field — tug2-gur bundling work, [at a rate of] ½ iku [+] ¼ iku per [worker-day]; for rafter-wood work, times 3, [at a rate of] 4 iku ½ iku per [worker-day] — [The labor] of the workers thereof: 150 days. [The field:] KWU729-x-[…]. [Overseer:] Šeš?-[…]. [Sealed by] Ur-emah. Year after Šu-Suen, [the king], built the Martu (Amorite) wall. Ur-emah, scribe, son of Dada.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Engine notes
read from photo8 uncertain terms ↓
- tug2-gurx(|SZE.KIN|) tug2-gur8 — The exact meaning of tug-gur / tug-gurx in this context is debated; likely refers to a type of textile work, possibly 'fulling' or 'pressing' cloth. The sign complex |SZE.KIN| for gurx is a known but uncommon variant.
- gesz-ur3-ra — Literally 'timber-roofing'; refers to the work of laying roof beams. Standard Ur III labor category.
- a2 erin2-na — Literally 'labor of the troops/workers'; standard Ur III term for corvée or conscripted labor force.
- u4 2(gesz2) 3(u)-kam — 2×60 + 30 = 150 days, or possibly read as 2(gesz2) 3(u) = 150. The exact numeral parsing depends on the sign grouping in the original, which cannot be fully confirmed from the photo.
- KWU729-x-[...] — KWU729 is a rare sign catalogued in the Krebernik-Waetzoldt sign list; the field name here is only partially preserved and the reading is uncertain.
- szesz? — Reading of the overseer's name is tentative; the šeš element (brother) may be part of a compound name; the rest is broken.
- bad3 mar-tu — The 'Amorite Wall' (Sumerian: bad3 mar-tu), a defensive fortification built by Šu-Suen; well attested in Ur III date formulas.
- mu us2-sa — Standard Ur III formula meaning 'the year after (the year in which)'; the full date formula identifies the administrative year.
Reasoning ↓
Layer 1 — visual examination: The photograph shows a multi-sided tablet (labeled GF3 / CF3 in modern pen), displayed from several angles. The obverse/face view (middle-left cluster) reveals densely impressed cuneiform wedges on a dark-fired clay surface. The tablet is fragmentary: the upper-left corner and lower portions show clear breakage and erosion, consistent with the square brackets in the transliteration. Individual sign clusters are visible but at this resolution most individual wedges cannot be confidently resolved into specific sign readings — the surface is deeply impressed and relatively well-preserved in the central area, but the edges are lost. The reverse face (bottom image) shows additional sign columns, also with wedge impressions visible but not fully legible at this resolution. Layer 2 — transliteration-based: This is a standard Ur III labor/field account from Umma. The text records field areas assigned to textile-fulling and timber-roofing labor at given area-rates, with a total corvée labor in days, followed by field name, overseer, and seal notation. The date formula 'mu us2-sa šu-suen lugal-e bad3 mar-tu ba-du3' is the well-known year name for the year after Šu-Suen built the Amorite wall (Šu-Suen year 4 or 5 equivalent formula). Cross-check: The photo confirms a fragmentary tablet with multiple lines of text and edge damage matching the lacunae in the transliteration, but individual sign resolution is insufficient to confirm or dispute specific readings; 'cannot verify' the broken passages from the photo alone. The sign KWU729 is a rare or damaged reading and cannot be verified visually.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-11/v3-conventions · May 11, 2026 · 3167 in / 1196 out tokens
Transliteration
[2(esze3)] 3(iku) GAN2 tug2-gurx(|SZE.KIN|) tug2#-gur8 1/2(iku) 1/4(iku) GAN2-ta gesz-ur3-ra a-ra2 3(disz) 4(iku) 1/2(iku) GAN2-ta [a2] erin2-na-bi u4 2(gesz2) 3(u)-kam [a]-sza3 KWU729-x-[...] [ugula] szesz?-[...] [kiszib3] ur-e2-[mah] mu# us2-sa szu-suen [lugal]-e bad3 mar-[tu ba]-du3 ur-e2-mah dub-sar dumu da-da
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAS 024. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y2 — Year after: Šu-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: College de France, Paris, France (P100012) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.