Position in chronology
DP 292
About this tablet
This small clay tablet is a household account from the archive of Bara-namtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of the Sumerian city-state of Lagash around 2350 BCE — one of the earliest well-documented royal-household administrations in history. It records a delivery of five talents of a preserved fish product (adartun) from a fisherman of the Tigris, handed over through the palace overseer En-iggal and logged into the queen's storehouse in the third year of her husband's reign. Texts like this, found by the hundreds at ancient Girsu (modern Tello), show how meticulously Early Dynastic Mesopotamian palaces tracked even modest quantities of food moving through their stores.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A fisherman named Ur-igiama, who worked the Tigris river, handed over five talents of preserved (adartun) fish. The delivery was processed and confirmed by the overseer En-iggal. It was then deposited into the storehouse — apparently one built for a person or entity named Bil-agames, though that part of the tablet is damaged and partly restored — and formally entered into the household's records. The whole transaction was carried out under the authority of Bara-namtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash, in the third year of the reign. This is a routine receipt from a well-run palace accounting office.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 talents of adartun-fish — for Ur-igiama, the fisherman of the Tigris (i7-mah, "great river"): it was returned/delivered by hand. En-iggal, the overseer (of the transaction). [The storehouse (e2-bar)], [built for Bil-agames], [was brought in / entered]. Bara-namtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash. Year 3.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 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
5(asz@c) gu2 a-dar-tun2 ur-igi-ama-sze3 szu-[ku6] i7 mah-ke4 szu-a bi2-gi4 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 e2 [e2-bar] [bil3-aga3-mes-sze3 du3-a] [i3-kux(DU)] bara2-nam-tar-ra dam lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz-ka 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 292. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220942) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.