Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 064
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, central Iraq), dating to roughly 2500–2350 BCE, recording a distribution of bread rations and pottery vessels among several institutional parties. What makes it stand out is the explicit naming of the ensi — the governor — of Lagash, a major city-state to the south, appearing on a tablet originating from Adab: evidence of inter-city administrative contact in this period. The goods move through the geszax office and are linked to the household of the gudu-priest, a cultic purification specialist whose estate functioned as an economic institution in its own right. The tablet is dated to the barley-harvest month and was perforated through the center, a feature of some ED administrative tablets possibly used for archival storage on a peg or cord.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records the issue of 180 bread rations and a quantity of ceramic vessels — ten jars, though some number of those is noted as a deficit and the precise shortfall is now lost where the clay is broken. The transaction passed through the hands of the local governor and the geszax administrative office, and also involved the governor of the city of Lagash. The location was the household of the gudu-priest. All of this took place in the barley-harvest month.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine180 ninda-bread; 10, less [n?] vessels (dug) — [deficit]; the ensi (governor); the geszax-official; the ensi of Lagash; the household of the gudu-priest. Month: it is the barley-harvest month.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
3(gesz2@c)# ninda 1(u@c) la2# [n] dug# ensi2 geszax(|UH3xKASKAL|) ensi lagaszx(|BUR.SZIR.LA.MUSZEN|) e2 gudux(AH) iti sze-gurx(|SZE&SZE.KIN|)-a-am6
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 064. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P250869) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.