Position in chronology
DP 104
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic livestock receipt from Girsu (modern Tello), in the city-state of Lagash, about 2350 BCE. Fifty grown goats held on the account of the fattener are handed over by En-iggal — the chief administrator of the ruler's household, a man known from hundreds of Lagash tablets — to a goatherd named Lugal-inim, the transfer taking place at a city gate just after the great malt-eating festival of the goddess Nanše. The closing note, that the transaction 'was not entered on the broad tablet,' is an internal audit remark: the scribe is flagging that this delivery is missing from the main ledger, and dates it to the third year of the reigning ruler.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Fifty full-grown goats, of the dun-a class, charged to the fattener's account via the enku-official. En-iggal, the estate overseer, released them to Lugal-inim the goatherd at the É-ki gate, immediately after Nanše's malt-eating festival. Note: this transfer was never posted to the main ledger. Year 3.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine50 full-grown goats, goats of the dun-a class, (from) the enku-official — it is the fattener's (charge). En-iggal, the overseer, after the malt-eating festival of Nanše, to Lugal-inim, the goat-herd, at the gate of the É-ki[...] [gave] them to him. It was not entered on the broad tablet. 3rd (year).
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
5(u@c) masz gal-gal masz dun-a en-ku3 kuruszda-kam en-ig-gal nu-banda3 egir4 ezem munu4 gu7 nansze-ka-ta lugal-inim sipa masz-ra [a]-bul5-la e2-ki?-ka-ka [e]-na-szum2 dub dagal-a nu-gar 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 104. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220754) — 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.