Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 034
About this tablet
A small clay tablet from Adab in southern Iraq, written around 2400 BCE, listing parcels of farmland measured in iku (about 3,600 square metres each) beside the names of the men who held or worked them. Lugal-kal, Ur-nu and Lugal-ildu each hold roughly three iku; another entry is a smaller plot of 1 iku 2 sar. The right-hand third of the surface has crumbled away, so several names and figures are lost. It is a routine piece of estate bookkeeping — the kind of survey record that shows how a Sumerian institution divided its fields among dependent cultivators.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A field register: one plot of 1 iku 2 sar (name partly lost), then E-zi; three iku each to Lugal-kal, Ur-nu and a man whose name ends in -adgal; an entry for U-nu-NI-NI with the figure broken away; then a plot of at least 1 iku and one of 2 iku whose holders' names are lost, and finally 2 iku to Lugal-ildu. The right side of the tablet has broken off, taking part of the list with it, and the back was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 iku 2 sar [...] E-zi 3 iku — Lugal-kal 3 iku — Ur-nu 3 iku — ...-adgal ( — ) U-nu-NI-NI [n +] 1 iku [...] 2 iku [...] 2 iku — Lugal-ildu (Reverse: uninscribed / blank)
Our translation engine — Opus 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
1(iku@c) 2(disz@t) sar# [x?] e2-zi# 3(iku@c) lugal-kal 3(iku@c)# ur-nu 3(iku@c)# x-ad2-gal2 () u3-nu-NI-NI [n] 1(iku@c)# [...] 2(iku@c) [...] 2(iku@c) lugal-ildu3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 034. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252784) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-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.
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.