Position in chronology
DP 104
About this tablet
This is a small clay administrative tablet from the city of Girsu (modern Tello) in southern Iraq, dating to the Early Dynastic period, roughly the 25th–24th century BCE — among the oldest surviving bureaucratic paperwork in the world. It records a delivery of fifty goats or kids, tracking them through a chain of named officials: a livestock fattener called Enku, an overseer named Enig-gal, and a shepherd, Lugal-inim, who received the animals at a temple gate after a religious festival honoring the goddess Nanše. The closing note that the transaction was 'not entered on the wide tablet' shows scribes at Girsu already distinguishing between individual receipts and the larger summary ledgers into which such transactions were normally consolidated — a glimpse of accounting method four and a half thousand years old.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Fifty large goats, described as 'driven' animals, were handed over to Enku, the livestock fattener. Enig-gal, the overseer, processed this after the malt-eating festival of the goddess Nanše had ended. The goats went to Lugal-inim, shepherd of the goat flocks, who took delivery at the gate of the temple building. A closing note flags that this particular transaction, marked with the number 3, was kept as a separate record and not folded into the main summary ledger — the ancient equivalent of a receipt not yet reconciled with the books.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine50 large goats/kids — maš-dun-a goats (driven/led goats), (for) Enku, the fattener. Enig-gal, the overseer, after the malt-eating festival of Nanše — (from) Lugal-inim, shepherd of the goats, at the gate of the house of Eki(?) — was given to him. Not entered on the summary (wide) tablet. 3.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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-sonnet-5 (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.