Position in chronology
DP 200
About this tablet
A small clay record from Girsu in southern Iraq, written around 2350 BCE for the household of Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash. It notes two sheep she offered to the gods Mes-an-du and Nin-šubur when she travelled to the 'House of the Crescent' — a shrine in the Holy City quarter — at the close of the month named for the festival of the god Lugal-URU11. The animals were supplied and accounted for by a palace livestock-fattener named Enku, and the text is dated to the fourth year of the reign. Tablets like this one show how carefully a Sumerian queen's religious expenditures were bookkept, animal by animal.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two sheep, one for the god Mes-an-du and one for Nin-šubur. Queen Baranamtara presented them as offerings when she went up to the House of the Crescent in the Holy City, at the end of the month of the Lugal-URU11 festival. The animals were then eaten at the ceremony. Charged to the account of Enku, the palace fattener. Year 4.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sheep — (for) Mes-an-du; 1 sheep — (for) Nin-šubur. Baranamtara, in the month of the festival of Lugal-URU11 (Lugal-URUxKAR2), at its ending, when she went to the House of the Crescent in the Holy City, made the offering. The sheep, having been consumed — it is (the account) of Enku the fattener. (Year) 4.
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 mes-an-du 1(asz@c) udu nin-szubur bara2-nam-tar-ra iti ezem lugal-uru11-ka til-la-ba e2 u4-sakar iri ku3-ga-sze3 e-gen-na-a gesz be2-tag udu gu7-a en-ku3 kuruszda-kam 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 200. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220850) — 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.