Position in chronology
DP 361
About this tablet
This small cushion-shaped tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello), dating to the Early Dynastic IIIb period (around 2400 BCE), is a routine administrative receipt from the household of the goddess Bau/Baranamtara — the same archive that produced hundreds of similar 'DP' texts. It records the harvesting and delivery of a large quantity of reed bundles: cut under the supervision of a foreman named Inim-du, hauled from a named field by a worker called Inimanizi, and formally delivered by the well-known overseer Eniggal into a storehouse at the edge of the city, with the labor time (11 days) noted for accounting purposes. Tablets like this are the bookkeeping backbone of one of the world's earliest bureaucracies, tracking raw materials (reed was used for baskets, mats, construction, and fuel) as they moved from field to storehouse.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A shipment of reed was harvested and processed: 420 bundles of cut reed in total. The cutting was carried out under the foreman Inim-du. The reed came from the field called 'A-us2,' and a worker named Inimanizi hauled it in. The overseer Eniggal then formally delivered it into the storehouse at the edge of the town. The job took 11 days of labor, which is duly recorded for the account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine7 gešʼu (420) bundles of reed, cut reed — (under) Inim-du, who is the foreman. From the field 'A-us2', Inimanizi hauled (it). Eniggal, the overseer, into the house at the edge of the city delivered (it). Labor of 11 days.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 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
7(gesz2@c) sa gi gi ku5-ra2 inim-du11 ugula-kam GAN2 a-us2-ta inim-ma-ni-zi mu-la2 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 e2 za3 iri-ka-ka i3-kux(DU) a2 u4 1(u@c) 1(disz@t)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 361. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221011) — 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.