Position in chronology
DP 201
About this tablet
A small clay receipt from the Sumerian city of Girsu, about 2350 BCE, recording a single sheep given by Bara-namtara — the queen of Lagash and wife of the ruler Lugalanda — as an offering to the god Mes-andu just after the great Nanše festival, when barley was ceremonially eaten. The animal was then consumed in the ritual meal, and the transaction was booked against Enku, the palace livestock fattener, in the fifth year of the reign. Tablets like this come from the famous archive of the queen's household, one of the earliest bodies of evidence anywhere for a woman running a large economic institution in her own name.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One sheep, given for the god Mes-andu. Queen Bara-namtara made the offering just after the Nanše festival at which the barley is ceremonially eaten, and the animal was consumed in the meal. The sheep was drawn from the stock of Enku, the palace fattener, and charged to his account. Dated to the fifth year of the reign.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sheep, for (the god) Mes-andu: Bara-namtara, after the festival "Barley-eating of Nanše," offered (it); it was consumed (eaten). (Account) of Enku the fattener. Year 5.
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-sze3 bara2-nam-tar-ra egir4 ezem sze gu7 nansze-ka-ta gesz be2-tag gu7-a en-ku3 kuruszda-kam 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 201. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220851) — 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.