Position in chronology
DP 358
About this tablet
This is a delivery record from the temple and palace administration of Lagash at Girsu, in southern Iraq, around 2400 BCE, shortly before the reforms of Uru'inimgina (Urukagina). It records 420 bundles of cut reeds. A work team under the foreman Inim-du11 cut them on a named field, the chief plowman A2-ne2-kur-ra hauled them, and En-ig-gal, the overseer of an estate called 'the House at the Edge of the City', booked them in. Reeds were a basic material in Mesopotamia, used for building, fuel, mats and boats. Small receipts like this one show how carefully the great households tracked even ordinary goods and the days of work that went into them.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: 420 bundles of cut reeds, harvested by the crew of foreman Inim-du11. The reeds came from the A-us field, and the chief plowman A2-ne2-kur-ra transported them. En-ig-gal, overseer of the House at the Edge of the City, received them into stock. Dated year 3. The job took 12 days of work.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 420 (7 × 60) bundles of reeds, cut reeds, of Inim-du11, the foreman (ugula), are they. From the field A-us2, A2-ne2-kur-ra, the head plowman, transported (them). En-ig-gal, the overseer (nu-banda3) of the House at the Edge of the City, Reverse brought (them) in. Year 3. Labor of 12 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 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 e2 za3 iri-ka-ka i3-kux(DU) 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|) a2 u4 1(u@c) 2(disz@t)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 358. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221008) — 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.