Position in chronology
DP 356
About this tablet
This small clay tablet, now in the Louvre (AO 13562), is a workaday accounting record from the Presargonic city of Girsu (Tello), part of the great Lagash temple archive of roughly the 24th century BCE. It logs a delivery of 420 bundles of cut reed, harvested from a specific field called Austa by a chief plowman named Anekura, under the supervision of a foreman named Inim-du, and formally received into a city storehouse by the well-known temple administrator Enigal. Reed was a staple raw material in Mesopotamia — used for baskets, mats, roofing, and writing implements — so this text is a tiny thread in the vast bookkeeping apparatus that ran the Bau/Baba temple household at Lagash. Enigal himself appears on dozens of similar tablets as the chief steward (nubanda) who processed such deliveries.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a receipt: 420 bundles of reed, already cut, were brought in from the Austa field. The reed-cutting was overseen by a foreman named Inim-du, and the field work was done by Anekura, the chief plowman. The bundled reed was delivered to a storehouse at the edge of the city, where the official Enigal signed off on it as the third such delivery. The record closes by noting the labor involved came to nine days.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine7(geš2) bundles of reed — reed (that was) cut — (under) Inim-du, the foreman; from the field Austa (GAN2 a-us2), (by) Anekura, the chief plowman (sag-apin); (it) was tied/bound (mu-la2) (into) the storehouse at the edge of the city; Enigal received (it) — 3rd (entry); labor of 9 days (10 days minus 1).
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
7(gesz2@c) sa gi gi ku5-ra2 inim-du11 ugula-kam GAN2 a-us2-ta a2-ne2-kur-ra sag-apin-ke4 mu-la2 e2 za3 iri-ka-ka en-ig-gal i3-kux(DU) 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|) a2 u4 1(u) la2 1(asz)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 356. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221006) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.