Position in chronology
DP 263
About this tablet
An administrative record from the city of Girsu in the Sumerian state of Lagash, dating to the first year of King Urukagina (around 2350 BCE), famous as history's earliest named reformer. Four wool sheep had gone missing from the flock of a shepherd named En-DU during a festival month, and Queen Sasa — who ran the great household called the E-munus — personally saw to it that the animals were restored to him. It is a small window into how even a handful of sheep were tracked, and how the royal household intervened in everyday losses.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Four wool sheep went missing from En-DU, the shepherd in charge of the wool flock, during the festival month when the goddess Baba was carried into her new temple. Sasa, wife of Urukagina, king of Lagash, handed them back to him at the Women's House — the queen's estate that managed such flocks. Recorded in year 1 of the king's reign.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 wool-bearing sheep — in the month when Baba was brought into her new house — strayed away from En-DU, the shepherd of the wool sheep. Sasa, the wife of Urukagina, the king of Lagash, returned them into his hand in the E-munus (the 'Women's House'). Year 1.
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
4(asz@c) udu siki iti ba-ba6 e2 gibil-na lah5-a en-DU sipa udu siki-ka-da na ba-da-ri sa6-sa6 dam URU-KA-gi-na lugal lagasz-ka-ra e2-munus-a szu-na i3-ni-gi4 1(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 263. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220913) — 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.