Position in chronology
DP 209
About this tablet
A small delivery receipt from the city of Girsu in Sumer, around 2360 BCE, from the household archive of Bara-namtara — the queen of Lagash and wife of the ruler Lugalanda. A temple administrator of the goddess Ninmar sent her three animals as a customary festival offering during the 'Malt-eating festival of Ningirsu', and a professional animal-fattener named Enku took charge of them. Hundreds of such tablets survive from this queen's estate, giving us one of the earliest detailed pictures of a great institutional household and the ceremonial gift economy that linked temples and palace.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Received: one ram, one male goat kid, and one smaller kid, delivered as the customary mašdaria festival gift. The sender is A-agrigzi, chief administrator of the temple of the goddess Ninmar; the recipient is Queen Bara-namtara. The delivery arrived during the month of Ningirsu's 'Malt-eating' festival. Enku, the professional animal-fattener on the queen's staff, collected the animals and took them into his care. Filed in year 4 (of the ruler Lugalanda's reign).
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ram, 1 male kid, 1 small (lesser-quality) kid: as the mašdaria-offering, A-agrigzi, the temple administrator (sanga) of (the goddess) Ninmar, in the month of the festival "Malt-eating of Ningirsu," to Bara-namtara delivered it. Enku, the fattener, took them out (into his charge). 4th (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(asz@c) udu-nita 1(asz@c) masz 1(asz@c) masz sig masz-da-re-a a-agrig-zi sanga nin-mar iti ezem munu4 gu7 nin-gir2-su-ka-ka bara2-nam-tar-ra mu-na-kux(DU) en-ku3 kuruszda-e ba-ra 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 209. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220859) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.