Position in chronology
DP 079
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from the temple estate of the goddess Baba at Girsu (modern Tello), in the state of Lagash, around 2350 BCE. It records a single unshorn sheep offered to Baba by Baranamtara, wife of the ruler of Lagash, while she was staying at a place called the Pirig-tur-gin-du gate; the animal was then slaughtered and eaten, and the transaction was booked to Ur-du, the estate's chief herdsman. Tablets like this come from the archive of the queen's own household — one of the earliest well-documented bodies of accounting anywhere — and they show a royal wife acting in her own name as a donor and manager of temple livestock.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One sheep, still in full fleece, was given to the goddess Baba. The donor was Baranamtara, the ruler's wife, who handed it over while she was staying at the Pirig-tur-gin-du gate. The animal was consumed, and the entry was charged to the account of Ur-du, chief herdsman of the estate. The last lines, on the badly worn reverse, are restored from parallel records of the same archive.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sheep with its fleece still wrapped (unshorn) — (for) Baba; Baranamtara, (wife of) the ruler, when she resided at the gate of Pirig-[tur-gin₇]-du, [delivered (it) to her]. (reverse) [Sheep consumed.] [Ur-du], the chief herdsman, [it is (his account)].
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 bar nigin2-na ba-ba6 bara2-nam-tar-ra ensi2 ka pirig-[tur-gin7]-du-[ka] mu-[ti]-la-[a] [mu-na-kux(DU)] [udu gu7-a] [ur-du6] szusz3-[kam]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 079. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220729) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.