Position in chronology
DP 142
About this tablet
A grain-ration account from the great temple household at Girsu in southern Iraq, around 2350 BCE, in the last generation of the independent state of Lagash. Three named men — Sag-Ningirsuda, Enku and Lugal-sipa — receive barley from the estate's stores, and the whole handout is booked under Eniggal, the household overseer whose name appears on hundreds of tablets from this archive. The scribe notes that this was the fourth distribution of the fourth year, then adds a further entry for Id-lu-sikil, son of Ur-Ninmar. Documents like this one are the payroll records of a Sumerian city-state, and their arithmetic still balances exactly.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley issued as rations, in standard ("head") gur measure: Sag-Ningirsuda, 2 gur 2 ban; Enku, 1 gur 2 barig; Lugal-sipa, 1 gur 1 barig 1 ban. Total: 5 gur less 3 ban of NE-GI-bar barley. Dated to a month named for Ningirsu, whose name is partly broken away. Eniggal, the overseer, handed the grain out to the carriers. Year 4; this was the fourth distribution of the year. A further entry follows: 1 gur for Id-lu-sikil, son of Ur-Ninmar — and the name Lu-inimanizi.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 gur 2 ban of barley rations — NE-GI-bar barley, (measured) by the head-gur: Sag-Ningirsuda; 1 gur 2 barig: Enku; 1 gur 1 barig 1 ban: Lugal-sipa. Total: 5 gur less 3 ban of [NE]-GI-[bar] barley, [head-gur measure]. Month [...] of Nin[girsu]. Eniggal, the overseer, distributed (it) to the carriers. 4th (year). It is the 4th distribution. 1 (gur): Id-lu-sikil, son of Ur-Ninmar, Lu-inimanizi.
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
2(asz@c) 2(ban2) sze-ba sze NE-GI-bar gur saggal sag-nin-gir2-su-da 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) en-ku3 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) 1(ban2@c) lugal-sipa szu-nigin2 5(asz@c) la2 3(ban2@c) sze [NE]-GI-[bar] gur [saggal] iti [...] nin-[gir2-su]-ka-ka en-ig-gal nu-banda3 il2-ne e-ne-ba 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|) 4(disz@t) ba-am6 1(asz@c) i7-lu2-sikil dumu ur-nin-mar lu2 inim-ma-ni-zi
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 142. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220792) — 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.