Position in chronology
DP 090
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello), part of the large Early Dynastic archive belonging to Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of the city-state of Lagash around 2400 BCE. It records a single sheep sent as a mašdaria — a customary tribute or gift-offering — from the wife of a palace surveyor to Baranamtara's household estate, the so-called 'Women's House.' A palace fattener named Enku physically carried the animal in and the transaction was logged, month by month, by the scribes who ran this remarkably well-documented royal household economy. Hundreds of similar tablets survive from this archive, together forming one of the earliest detailed records of institutional bookkeeping in human history.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ninbur, the wife of a royal land-surveyor, sent in one shorn ram as her customary gift-offering to Baranamtara's household. It arrived during the month of the malt-eating festival and was handed over to the Women's House, the palace estate that managed such deliveries. Enku, the livestock fattener on staff, was the one who actually brought the animal in and is named as responsible for the delivery. The clerk logged it as the second such entry in this account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ram, shorn (ready for delivery) — mašdaria-offering (obligatory gift): Ninbur, wife of the land-surveyor, (to) Baranamtara. Month: 'Festival of Malt-Eating'. Of Lugal-urukaka, to the Women's House it was delivered. Enku, the (livestock) fattener, carried it. 2 (entry/total).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(asz@c) udu-nita ur4-ra masz-da-re-a nin-bur dam lu2 esz2-gid2 bara2-nam-tar-ra iti ezem munu4 gu7 lugal-uru11-ka-ka e2-munus-a mu-na-kux(DU) en-ku3 kuruszda-e ba-de6 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 090. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220740) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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.