Position in chronology
DP 359
About this tablet
A short receipt written on a small, rounded clay tablet from the state household at Girsu, in the city-state of Lagash, around 2400 BCE. It records that En-iggal, a well-known overseer and administrator of the household's stores, took back a delivery of 55 bundles of reeds from the men of a man named Lugal-dalla, at a storehouse called 'the House at the Edge of the City'. Reeds were everyday materials used for building, fuel, mats and baskets, and small notes like this let the palace and temple offices keep track of every bundle.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: 55 bundles of reeds, counted one by one, have come in from Lugal-dalla's crew. En-iggal, the overseer, took them back into his keeping at the storehouse known as the House at the Edge of the City. Recorded on day 1. The back of the tablet is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: 55 (literally 60 minus 5) bundles of reed, counted individually, (from) the men of Lugal-dalla: En-iggal, the overseer, in the House at the Edge of the City, returned them to his hand. (Edge:) Day 1.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
1(gesz2@c) la2 5(asz@c)? didli-bi sa gi lu2 lugal-dalla-ke4-ne en-ig-gal nu-banda3 e2 za3 iri-ka-ka szu-na i3-ni-gi4 u4 1(disz@t)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 359. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221009) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.