Position in chronology
DP 306
About this tablet
A small delivery receipt from the temple-household archive of Girsu (modern Tello), in southern Iraq, written about 2350 BCE. A fisherman named Lugal-šala-tuku hands over ten fish as his assigned quota, and the chief administrator En-iggal books them into the storehouse of the Women's House — the estate of the ruler's wife, which ran much of Lagash's economy. It is dated only by month (the festival of Nanše, patron goddess of fish and water) and by the third regnal year of the reigning ruler. Documents like this, produced by the hundreds, are how we know what an ancient Sumerian household ate and who owed what to whom.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Received: ten sumaš-fish, delivered as the standard basket-quota. Brought in during the month of Nanše's barley-eating festival by Lugal-šala-tuku, one of the sea-fishermen. Entered into the stores of the Women's House and signed for by the overseer En-iggal. Third regnal year.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 sumaš-fish — they are dusu-basket fish. In the month "Festival of the Barley-Eating of Nanše": Lugal-šala-tuku, the sea-fisherman, brought (them). En-iggal, the overseer, in the Women's House received them in hand (lit. "returned (them) into the hand"). (Year) 3.
Our translation engine — Opus 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) sumasz ku6 dusu-kam iti ezem sze gu7 nansze-ka lugal-sza3-la2-tuku szu-ku6 ab-ba-ke4 mu-de6 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 e2-munus-a szu-a bi2-gi4 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 306. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220956) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.