Assyro-Babylonian literature -- Translations into English
The field is measured as follows:[2] Three stades in length toward the
East, in the direction of the town of Bagdad; three stades in length
toward the West, adjoining the house of Tunamissah; 1 stade 50 fathoms[3]
in breadth toward the North, adjoining the property of Kilnamandu; 1 stade
50 fathoms up in the South, adjoining the property of Kilnamandu.
Sirusur, son of Kilnamandu, gave it for all future days to Dur-Sarginaiti,
his daughter, the bride[4] of Tab-asap-Marduk, son of Ina-e-saggatu-irbu
(the pretended), who wrote this; and Tab-asap-Marduk, son of
Ina-e-saggatu-irbu, who wrote this in order to perpetuate without
interruption the memory of this gift, and commemorated on this stone the
will of the great gods and the god Serah.
[Footnote 1: Or the great U, namely, of the field in question.]
[Footnote 2: Dr. Oppert's first translation of this passage, which is to
be found in almost all documents of this kind, has been corrected in
"L'Etalon des mesures assyriennes," p. 42. The field of Kilnamandu was a
rectangle of 1-5/6 stades in breadth and 3 stades long, viz., 5-1/2 square
stades, amounting to 19.64 hectares, or 48-1/2 English acres. The Stone of
Micheux is the only one which affords a valuation of the land.
The arura (great U) is valued at 88 hectares, 207 acres in the Babylonian
system; a hin is almost 3 litres, or 5 pints and a quarter; 20 hins,
therefore, are somewhat more than 13 gallons. The fertility of the
Babylonian soil was renowned in antiquity. See Herodotus i. 193.]
[Footnote 3: A fathom, 10-1/3 feet, is the sixtieth part of a stade, 620
feet.]
[Footnote 4: This word is explained in a syllabary copied by Dr. Oppert in
1855, but which has never been published. The three signs of the ideogram
("Bit-gigunu-a") are rendered by "kallatu" ("a bride"), and this very
important statement put the translator on the track of the right
interpretation.]
COLUMN II
Whosoever in the process of time, among the brothers, the sons, the
family, the men and women, the servants both male and female, of the house
of Kilnamandu, either a foreigner, or a guest, or whosoever he may be (or
anyone else), who will destroy this field, who will venture to take away
the boundary-stone, or will vindicate it: whether he consecrate this field
to a god, or earn it for his superior, or claim it for himself, or change
the extent, the surface, or the limits, that he reaps new harvests (crops);
or who will say of the field with its measures, "There is no granter;"
whether he call forth malediction and hostility on the tablets; or
establish on it anyone other who change these curses, in swearing: "The
head is not the head;" and in asserting: There is no evil eye;[1]
whosoever will carry elsewhere those tablets; or will throw them into the
water; will bury them in the earth; will hide them under stones; will burn
them with fire, will alter what is written on them, will confine them into
a place where they might not be seen; that man shall be cursed:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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