Position in chronology
DP 356
About this tablet
This is a delivery note from the temple household of Girsu in the state of Lagash, written around 2400 BCE. Workers under a foreman cut 420 bundles of reeds in a named field. A senior ploughman then hauled them to a storehouse known as the House at the Edge of the City. There they were received by Eniggal, a well-known estate manager of the period. Reeds were a basic material in southern Iraq, used for building, fuel, mats and baskets, and the note records not just the amount but the nine days of labour it took.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
420 bundles of reeds were cut, with Inimdu as foreman. Aneikura, the head ploughman, carried them from the A-uš field to the storehouse called the House at the Edge of the City. Eniggal logged them in during year 3. The whole job took nine days of work.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 7 (×60 = 420) bundles of reeds, cut reeds; Inimdu being the foreman. From the field A-uš, Aneikura, the head ploughman, carried (them) to the House at the Edge of the City. Reverse Eniggal brought (them) in. (Year) 3. It is the work of 9 days.
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
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-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.