Position in chronology
DP 061
About this tablet
A small sealed account tablet from Girsu (modern Tello) in the Sumerian state of Lagash, written about 2350 BCE. It records a single sheep supplied from the herd of Enku the fattener and used up in a religious ceremony: when the city-ruler travelled on temple business, his wife Baranamtara — a powerful figure who ran the household of the goddess Bau and kept her own archives — made the offering at the Abzu shrine by the canal bank, and the animal was then eaten. Tablets like this one, dated simply to 'year 2' of the reigning ruler, are the bookkeeping behind Sumerian ritual life, showing that even a sacrifice had to be entered against someone's account.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One gur-ra sheep, charged to the Abzu sanctuary on the canal bank. When the governor travelled out on the šagan business, Lady Baranamtara presented the animal as the offering, and it was then consumed. The sheep came from the stock of Enku, the fattener. Recorded in year 2.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gur-ra sheep — it belongs to the Abzu on the bank. When the ruler went for the matter of the šagan, Baranamtara made the offering with it; the sheep was consumed. Enku, he is the fattener. (Year) 2.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(asz@c) udu gur-ra abzu gu2-ka-kam ensi2 nig2 szaganx(AMA)-na-sze3 e-gen-na-a bara2-nam-tar-ra gesz be2-tag udu gu7-a en-ku3 kuruszda-kam 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 061. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220711) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.