20 hin of corn is the quantity for seeding an _arura_.[1] The field is
situated near the town of Kar-Nabu, on the bank of the river Mekaldan,
depending of the property of Kilnamandu.
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.]