Position in chronology
DP 204
About this tablet
An administrative delivery record from Girsu in southern Iraq, around 2370 BCE, from the household archive of Baranamtara — the powerful queen of the city-state of Lagash and wife of its ruler Lugalanda. It records consignments of sacred bread and milk associated with the gods Nanshe and Nindara being brought to the queen, dated to the second year of her husband's reign. Tablets like this show that the queen ran a major economic institution of her own, receiving and redistributing temple provisions — vivid evidence of women's administrative power in early Sumer.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Delivery slip: ten loaves made from fine gu-flour, thirty sur-loaves, one small vessel of milk, and twenty-five jars of milk on Nanshe's account; plus twenty sur-loaves, one vessel of milk, and a now-illegible number of milk jars on Nindar's account. These holy bread-and-milk provisions were delivered to Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash. Filed in year two.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 (loaves of) bread of fine gu-flour, 30 sur-(loaves), 1 nig-banda (vessel) of milk, 25 mud-jars of milk — (for/of) Nanshe; 20 sur-(loaves), 1 nig-banda (vessel) of milk, [x] mud-jars of milk — (for/of) Nindar. Holy bread (and) milk: to Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, the ruler of Lagash, it was delivered. 2nd (year).
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(u@c) ninda zi3 gu sig15 3(u@c) sur 1(asz@c) nig2-banda3 ga 2(u@c) 5(asz@c) mudx(LAK449) ga nansze 2(u@c) sur 1(asz@c) nig2-banda3 ga [x] mudx(LAK449) ga nin-dar ninda ga ku3-ga bara2-nam-tar-ra dam lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz-ka-ra mu-na-kux(DU) 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 204. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220854) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.