They were the first, and they began not with poetry or stories or great literature, but rather with economic transactions. This tablet is one of the earliest on record. It describes the transfer of 300 acres of land between two parties. As the city states of Sumer grew in size, an increasingly complex social structure called for more sophisticated techniques to record and store accounts of economic transactions. The tablet is divided into 3 columns, which are further subdivided in panels.
Solid lines mark both the columns and the panels.
The text picks up again on the front at the top of column 2, which continues down and around to the back. Column 3 does the same. Columns 2 and 3 describe how the 180 iku is divided into 4 fields. After translating the Persian, Rawlinson began to decipher the others. By 1851 he could read 200 Babylonian signs.