Position in chronology
MAD 5, 048
About this tablet
A legal-economic record from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE) found at Kish, one of the oldest cities of Mesopotamia. It documents a land sale: a woman identified only by her family role — 'the daughter-in-law' — weighed out silver as the purchase price for a field belonging to a man named Zabia. The transaction was witnessed by six men of Kish, several of them named, which is what gave the deal its legal force. Tablets like this show that women could act as purchasers of real estate in third-millennium Babylonia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt of payment for a field. The daughter-in-law has paid in full, in weighed silver, the purchase price of the field belonging to Zabia. Present as witnesses: Išqu-ilum; a man whose name ends in '-lugal' (the rest is broken); Ilīš-takal, son of Ilšu-KAL; Libūr-mēšum; and another man whose name is lost, possibly a slave or servant. In total, six witnesses — elders of Kish — attested the transaction. A short gap in the tablet obscures parts of two names, but the substance of the deal is intact.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [F]or the purchase price of the field, 2. that of Zabia, 3. the daughter-in-law 4. has weighed out (the silver). 5. Išqu-ilum, 6. [...]-lugal(?), 7. 1 Ilīš-takal, 8. son of Ilšu-KAL, 9. 1 Libūr-mēšum, 10. [...] the slave(?) (SAG). 11. [Total:] 6 witnesses/elders in Kish.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[a]-na _sa10 GAN2_ szi za-bi2-a _e2-gi4-a_ ta2-asz2-qu2-ul isz-qu2-dingir [...]-lugal#?_ 1(asz@c) i3-li2-isz-ta2-kal2 _dumu_ dingir-su-kal 1(asz@c) li-bur-me-szum [...] _sag_ [_szu-nigin2_] 6(asz@c) _abba2_ in kisz[]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 5, 048. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P215372) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.