Position in chronology
TMH 05, 070
About this tablet
A small, round, lens-shaped tablet from Nippur in southern Iraq, written in the Early Dynastic period (around 2600–2400 BCE). It is a land record: it lists plots of field measured in the old Sumerian area units bur and eše, assigned to named individuals, and labels the whole as the 'field of Ninurta', Nippur's great warrior god. It shows a temple estate keeping track of who held which parcel of its farmland — some of the earliest surviving agricultural bookkeeping from the city.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a field allotment list. A total of 3 bur and 1 eše of land (roughly 20 hectares) is recorded first, followed by an entry beginning with a broken name or term, and then a line that is entirely lost. After the gap, Ur-abzu, son of Balu, is listed with 1 bur 1 eše (about 8 hectares), and Lugal-hegal with the same amount. The closing line tags all of this as belonging to the field of the god Ninurta — that is, temple land at Nippur.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 bur 1 eše of field (area), AN-[...] [...] 1 bur 1 eše: Ur-abzu, son of Balu; 1 bur 1 eše: Lugal-hegal. Field of Ninurta.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
3(bur3@c) 1(esze3@c) GAN2 AN-[...] [...] 1(bur3@c) 1(esze3@c) ur-abzu dumu ba-lu5 1(bur3@c) 1(esze3@c) lugal#-he2-gal2 GAN2 nin-urta
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 070. 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: Hilprecht Collection, University of Jena, Germany (P020484) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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