Position in chronology
DP 340
About this tablet
A small clay account from Girsu (modern Tello) in southern Iraq, written about 2400 BCE in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash. It records measures of malt — the germinated barley from which beer was brewed — issued for two kinds of beer, sweet and dark, and charged to a shrine, to the temple household, and to several named men. Beer was the staple drink and a form of wages in Sumer, so malt accounts like this one are among the commonest documents from the Lagash temple archives, and they show the brewing economy being tracked down to the last ban-measure.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Malt issued: one barig for sweet beer and one barig for dark beer, charged to Mu-anne-du and booked to the shrine. One barig and two ban of malt to Mes-andu; four ban of malt charged to the temple household. One barig and two ban of malt assigned to Ki-[Utu]; plus the malt of Nammaḫni. Mu-anne-du used it up on the brewer's account. A final figure, 2, closes the record, though its unit is unclear.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 barig of malt (for) sweet beer; 1 barig of malt (for) dark beer — (for) Mu-anne-du; it belongs to the shrine. 1 barig 2 ban of malt: Mes-andu; 4 ban of malt — it belongs to the house of the god (the temple). 1 barig 2 ban of malt: [belonging to] Ki-[Utu]; malt of Nammaḫni. Mu-anne-du has consumed it for the brewer. 2 (units?)
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(barig@c) munu4 kas sig15 1(barig@c) munu4 kas ge6 mu-an-ne2-du10 esz3-kam 1(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) munu4 mes-an-du 4(ban2@c) munu4 e2 dingir-ra-kam 1(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) munu4 ki [utu-kam] munu4 nam-mah-ni mu-an-ne2-du10 lu2 lungax(|BIxNIG2|)-ra i3-[ni]-gu7# 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 340. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220990) — 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.