Position in chronology
DP 360
About this tablet
This is a delivery record from the temple estate at Girsu in the state of Lagash, written about 2400 BCE, before the Sargonic conquest. Two fishermen who worked the sea or lagoon waters each brought in 50 bundles of reed cut in a field called A-us. An overseer named En-iggal counted them, and the reeds went into the storehouse of an orchard. A further 90 bundles are credited to a woman named Dam-dingir-mu as two days' work. The tablet shows how temple households used their fishermen for other jobs, such as cutting reeds, a basic material for building, fuel and matting in the southern marshes.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ne-sag and Lugal-šà, two of the sea fishermen, each brought in 50 bundles of reed from the field called A-us. En-iggal, the overseer, counted the bundles, and they were stored in the orchard's storehouse. A further 90 bundles of reed are credited to Dam-dingir-mu, which covers two days of work.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 50 bundles of reed: Ne-sag; 50 bundles of reed: Lugal-šà; the fishermen of the sea from the field A-us carried them. En-iggal, the overseer, counted them; into the storehouse of the orchard they were brought. (Reverse / edge) 90 (1 šár-unit of 60 + 30) bundles of reed: Dam-dingir-mu; labour of 2 days.
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
5(u@c) gi sa ne-sag 5(u@c) sa gi lugal-sza3 szu-ku6 ab-ba-ke4-ne GAN2 a-us2-ta mu-il2 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 i3-szid ganun kiri6-ka i3-kux(DU) 1(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) sa gi dam-dingir-mu a2 u4 2(disz@t)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 360. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221010) — 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.