Position in chronology
OAIC 04
About this tablet
A small legal record from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar in eastern Iraq) from the Old Akkadian period, around 2300 BCE. It documents a payment of silver by one man to another for a piece of property, and then lists the men who stood as witnesses — including the city's overseer and a captain. Such tablets are among the earliest surviving evidence of how property sales were made binding in the Akkadian empire: not by a signature, but by naming respected townsmen who could later vouch for the deal.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ilum-dan paid Pū-Tišpak eleven shekels of silver as the price of a plot of land (with one extra shekel noted as part of the transaction). The witnesses to the deal were: Ikūnum son of Inium; Šu-bad son of Ši-ersina; Pū-Tišpak, overseer of the city; the captain Iliš-takal; and Warad-Tutu son of Bēlī-guru. They are listed as the witnesses of Gusura'um, apparently the place or field concerned.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 11 shekels of silver, 2. as the price of 1 išdu (plot?) — 1 shekel — 3. Ilum-dan 4. to Pū-Tišpak 5. gave. 6. 1 Ikūnum, 7. son of Inium; 8. 1 Šu-bad3, 9. son of Ši-ersina; 10. 1 Pū-Tišpak, the overseer of the city; 11. the captain (nu-banda3) Iliš-takal; 12. 1 Warad-Tutu, 13. son of Bēlī-guru: 14. (these are) the witnesses (abbūt) 15. of Gusura'um.
Our translation engine — Fable 5.1. 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
1(u@c) 1(asz@c) _gin2 ku3-babbar_ a-na _sa10 1(asz@c) isz-de3 1(asz@c) gin2_ dingir-kal a-na pu3-tiszpak i-di3-in 1(asz@c) i-ku8-num2 _dumu_ i-ni-um 1(asz@c) szu-bad3 _dumu_ szi-er3-e-si-na 1(asz@c) pu3-tiszpak _ugula iri_ _nu-banda3_ i3-li2-isz-ta2-kal2# 1(asz@c) ARAD2#-tu-tu _dumu_ be-li2-guru7 _abba2_-bu-ut gu#-su-ra-im
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OAIC 04. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P215876) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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.
An early surviving historical monument that joins named rulers, a territorial dispute and religious oaths. It shows how a city-state turned victory into a lasting public claim, without establishing that this was the first recorded conflict.
Among the oldest surviving written law collections. It provides an early witness to royal justice and specified compensation, rather than a starting date for law itself.