Position in chronology
DP 202
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from Girsu in the state of Lagash, written about 2350 BCE, roughly the size of a plum and ruled into boxes. It records that a sheep, a kid, beer and bread were carried to the residence of the city-ruler in connection with the threshing floor — the point in the farming year when the harvest was processed and the palace marked it with a meal. The animals are booked as 'grain-fed', and responsibility lies with Enku, the official fattener who raised livestock on fodder for the ruling household. The last sign gives the regnal year, 5.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Delivery to the ruler's residence: one sheep and one kid, plus beer and bread, sent up in connection with the threshing floor. The animals were stall-fed stock. Charged to Enku, the fattener. Year 5. The back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sheep, 1 kid; beer (and) bread, together with (the offerings for) the threshing floor — to the place of the ruler (ensi) he brought (them). Grain-fed sheep. Enku, the fattener. (Year) 5. (The reverse is uninscribed.)
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
1(asz@c) udu 1(asz@c) masz kas ninda ki-su7-ga-da ki ensi2-ka-sze3 e-da-de6 udu gu7-a en-ku3 kuruszda-kam 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 202. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220852) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.