Position in chronology
WF 059
About this tablet
An administrative land record from Šuruppak (modern Fara) in southern Iraq, written around 2500 BCE in the Early Dynastic period. A scribe lists twelve men by name, each assigned a measured parcel of farmland — from tiny half-iku strips (about a sixth of a hectare) up to a full eše of six iku. Tablets like this show how one of Sumer's oldest cities kept precise track of who worked or held which fields, centuries before the first law codes. The names themselves are a snapshot of the community: some invoke gods (E-kur-pa'e, Amar-šuba), others are so archaic we can only spell out their signs.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a field-allotment ledger. Lugal-ezen gets 1 iku of land (roughly a third of a hectare), and so does Ur-EŠ-ḪA. Ur-Lamma, Ur-Nin-girin, and E-kur-pa'e each get 3 iku. Amar-šuba receives a full eše — six iku. AN-sag-tuku gets 4 iku, AN-URUDU-si gets 3, and Il receives another six-iku eše. Anzu gets 3 iku, while A-NI-NI and UŠ each get just half an iku. Twelve names, twelve plots, totalling about 33 iku of farmland parcelled out and put on record.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 iku of field: Lugal-ezen. 1 iku: Ur-EŠ?-ḪA. 3 iku: Ur-Lamma. 3 iku: Ur-Nin-girin. 3 iku: E-kur-pa'e. 1 eše (= 6 iku): Amar-šuba. 4 iku: AN-sag-tuku. 3 iku: AN-URUDU-si. 1 eše (= 6 iku): Il. 3 iku: Anzu. 1/2 iku: A-NI-NI. 1/2 iku: UŠ.
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
1(iku@c) GAN2 lugal-ezen 1(iku@c) ur-ESZ?-HA 3(iku@c) ur-lamma 3(iku@c) ur-nin-girinx 3(iku@c) e2-kur-pa-e3 1(esze3@c) amar-szuba3 4(iku@c) AN-sag-tuku 3(iku@c) AN-URUDU-si 1(esze3@c) il2 3(iku@c) anzu 1/2(iku@c) a-NI-NI 1/2(iku@c) USZ
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 059. 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: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011016) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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