Position in chronology
DP 052
About this tablet
An administrative ration record from Girsu (modern Tello, southern Iraq), dating to around 2400 BCE in the Early Dynastic IIIb period. It records distributions of bread and dairy products to several named individuals and institutional categories, with the most prominent recipient being Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda the governor of Lagash — one of the best-documented women in all of early Mesopotamian history, known from dozens of tablets in the same Louvre archive. The goddess Nanše, patron deity of the Lagash city-state, has her own separate allocation here, reminding us that the temple and the palace drew their rations from the same bureaucratic pool. This tablet is a small but vivid piece of the sprawling administrative machine that provisioned the ruling household and its religious institutions in one of the world's first city-states.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ten loaves of top-quality bread go out as food rations, together with 50 measures of a pressed product, 10 measures of milk for the junior officials, and 40 measures of a specialty milk product. The Nanše temple's share comes to 30 measures of the pressed product and 20 of the specialty milk. A woman named Nindar receives bread and pure milk. Closing the list — and clearly the most senior recipient — is Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, governor of Lagash. A final tally of 4 units follows, though the precise type of unit is too unusual a sign to read with certainty.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 loaves of finest bread — as food rations; 50 [measures of] sur-product; 10 [measures of] milk for the junior official; 40 [measures of] mudx-grade milk; (for) Nanše: 30 [measures of] sur-product; 20 [measures of] mudx-grade milk; (for) Nindar: [bread,] pure milk; Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, governor of Lagash — 4 [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(u@c) ninda gu sig15 nig2-gu7-da 5(u@c) sur 1(u@c) nig2-banda3 ga 4(u@c) mudx(LAK449) ga nansze 3(u@c) sur 2(u@c) mudx(LAK449) ga nin-dar [ninda] ga ku3-ga bara2-nam-tar-ra dam lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz-ka 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 052. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220702) — 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.