Position in chronology
DP 355
About this tablet
This small clay tablet is a routine administrative receipt from the ED IIIb (Early Dynastic) archive of Girsu, part of the well-known bureaucratic records kept for the household administered by the manager Enigal under the ruling family of Lagash (the archive associated with Baranamtara and Lugalanda, c. 2400 BCE). It tracks a delivery of reed — sorted by type or grade (base-reed, malt-reed, cut reed) — from a named field to a storehouse at the edge of the city, checked off under Enigal's authority and dated to the seventh day of a work cycle. Tablets like this one, part of the huge Louvre 'DP' (Documents Présargoniques) collection excavated at Tello, are the paperwork of one of the earliest known state economies, tracking raw materials such as reed for construction, basketry, or fuel.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a receipt for 60 bundles of reed, broken down by type: base-reed, malt-reed, and cut reed. Inim-du is recorded as the foreman responsible for the batch. A further amount came in from the a-us2 field, associated with a person named U2-U2 (the term 'u2-du' here is unclear), and this too was weighed out and delivered to the storehouse at the edge of the city. The manager Enigal signed off on the transaction, with a receipt total of 3 noted. The entry is dated to the labor-day tally of day seven.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine60 bundles of reed: its base (ur2-ni), malt-reed (munu4-mu2), cut reed (gi ku5-ra2). Inim-du is the foreman. From the a-us2 field — U2-U2, u2-du (uncertain term) — was weighed out/delivered to the house at the edge of the city. Enigal, the manager (nubanda): receipt: 3. Labor-allotment of the 7th day.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(gesz2@c) sa gi ur2-ni munu4-mu2 gi ku5-ra2 inim-du11 ugula-kam GAN2 a-us2-ta U2-U2 u2-du mu-la2 e2 za3 iri-ka-ka en-ig-gal nu-banda3 i3-kux(DU) 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|) a2 u4 7(disz@t)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 355. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221005) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.