MVN 03, 025

About this tablet

This is a record of a land purchase from Sargonic-period Mesopotamia, around 2300–2200 BCE. The exact findspot is unknown, and the tablet is now in the Free Library of Philadelphia. A buyer named Sumu-nerah paid a man called Lugal-anna-tum for a field in instalments of barley and silver spread over several years, and the payments came from two different households. It shows that land could be bought on credit-like terms long before coinage, with grain and weighed silver serving as money.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

Here is the full payment for the field. In the first year Sumu-nerah paid 3 gur of barley, taken from the regular offerings. In the third year he paid 2½ shekels of silver, and in the fourth year another ½ shekel. He also paid 1 gur of barley at the time when the grain was clean, plus 2 barig of barley that had been measured out. All of these came from the household of NI. From the household of Zamu came a further 2 gur of barley in a first instalment and 1 gur in a second. Sumu-nerah handed all of this over to Lugal-anna-tum as the price of the field.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

1. 3 gur of barley from the regular offerings, 2. year 1; 3. 2 1/2 shekels of silver 4. of the 3rd year; 5. 1/2 shekel of silver of the 4th year; 6. 1 gur of barley, when the barley was clean; 7. 2 barig of barley (gur-measure), measured out; 8. from the house of NI. 9. 2 gur of barley, the 1st time; 10. 1 gur of barley, the 2nd time; 11. from the house of Zamu. 12. As the purchase price of the field, 13. Sumu-nerah 14. to Lugal-anna-tum 15. gave (it).

Indicative reading — translated without a photograph. Generated from the transliteration alone, without examining the original. Read it as an accessible first taste, not as a verified catalogue entry.

Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

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Transliteration

3(asz@c) sze gur sa2-du11-ta
mu 1(disz@t)-kam
2(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) ku3# gin2
mu 3(disz@t)-ma-ka
1/2(asz@c) ku3 gin2 mu 4(disz)-ma-ka
1(asz@c) sze gur u4 sze ku3-ga
2(barig@c) sze gur al-ag2-a
e2 NI-ta
2(asz@c) sze gur a-ra2 1(disz)-kam
1(asz@c) sze gur a-ra2 2(disz)-ma-ka
e2 za3-mu-ta
nig2-sa10 asza5-ga-sze3
su-mu-nerah-e
lugal-an-na-tum2-ra
i3-na-szum2

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MVN 03, 025. 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: Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P215683) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).

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