Position in chronology
DP 232
About this tablet
An administrative record from the city-state of Lagash in southern Iraq, around 2350 BCE, during the reign of the ruler Lugalanda. It documents eight yearling oxen from the ruler's own private herd — weaned calves handed back to the palace — being entrusted to a cowherd named Dingir-šešmu, with a bookkeeping note that the animals were not debited from the accounts of the herdsmen who previously kept them. Tablets like this, from the archive of the Lagash palace household, are among our best windows into how an early Sumerian state tracked its livestock, herd by herd and man by man.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Eight yearling oxen — animals belonging personally to Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash — were transferred at the palace. These were weaned calves that had been returned to palace care, and they were handed over to the cowherd Dingir-šešmu, in year 1. A closing note clarifies the accounting: the animals were not charged against the ledgers of the cowherds who had been keeping them until now.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 less 2 (= 8) one-year-old oxen, oxen (that are) the private property of Lugalanda, the ruler of Lagash — in the palace, calves returned to hand (i.e., weaned calves taken back into care) — to Dingir-šešmu, the cowherd, he gave them. (Year) 1. From their (respective) cowherds they were not deducted.
Our translation engine — Fable 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(u@c) la2 2(asz@c) gu4 mu 1(disz@t) gu4 u2-rum lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz-ka e2-gal-la amar szu-a i3-gi4-a dingir-szesz-mu unu3-ra e-na-szum2 1(|ASZxDISZ@t|) unu3-be2-ne nu-ta-zi
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 232. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220882) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.