Position in chronology
PBS 15, 20
About this tablet
A fragmentary Early Dynastic land-sale record from Nippur, inscribed on a round stone tablet — one of the oldest genres of legal document in the world. What survives records payments of silver, a named party, and the core of the transaction: a plot of prime farmland of about seven and a half hectares (1 bur3 and 3 iku) sold for a purchase price of 10 shekels of silver. Documents like this, carved in stone rather than clay, were meant as durable proof of ownership generations before written law codes existed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is the surviving portion of a property deed. The opening lines, though damaged, list amounts of silver — so many minas and shekels — paid in connection with the sale, and name one of the parties, whose name ends in -KAK-KAK. A few lines are then lost. The readable conclusion states the heart of the deal: a parcel of first-quality farmland measuring 1 bur3 and 3 iku (roughly 7.5 hectares) changed hands, and its purchase price was 10 shekels of silver. The rest of the document, which would have named witnesses or further payments, is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [n minas] of silver, [n] shekels — [...]-KAK-KAK (personal name); [n] shekels of silver — [...] ... ... [...] (Break) 1 bur3 3 iku of prime field (GAN2-mah): its purchase price — 10 shekels of silver.
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
[n ku3] ma#-na [n] gin2# [x]-KAK#-KAK [n] ku3# gin2 [...] x x [...] 1(bur3@c) 3(iku@c)# GAN2#-mah nig2-sa10 1(u@c) ku3 gin2#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — PBS 15, 20. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P269054) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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