Position in chronology
DP 364
About this tablet
This is a small clay account tablet from the palace household archive of Bara-namtara, wife of Lugalanda, the ruler (ensi2) of the city-state of Lagash in southern Iraq, around 2400 BCE. It records the delivery of a very large quantity — 1,020 bundles — of rope or cord, moved from one official (the overseer Inim-du) to another (the manager En-ig-gal) and deposited in a named storehouse. Tablets like this one belong to one of the richest surviving administrative archives from early Sumer, documenting the day-to-day logistics — labor, materials, rations — of a queen's household economy centuries before more famous royal inscriptions were written.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records that 1,020 bundles of rope were handed over. Inim-du, the overseer, brought them from the place called KA-geš. En-ig-gal, the manager, then received and stored them in the storehouse of Mes-an-du. The transaction is entered under the account of Bara-namtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash — entry (or year) 3.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(geš'u) 7(geš2) sa ma-nu — 1020 bundles of rope, Inim-du, the overseer, from KA-geš-ta, delivered (it). En-ig-gal, the manager, into the storehouse of Mes-an-du, received (it). (Account of) Bara-namtara, wife of Lugal-anda, ruler of Lagaš. 3.
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
1(gesz'u@c) 7(gesz2@c) sa ma-nu inim-du11 ugula KA-gesz-ta mu-de6 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 ganun mes-<an>-du-ka i3-kux(DU) bara2-nam-tar-ra dam lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz-ka 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 364. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221014) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.