Position in chronology
DP 366
About this tablet
This small clay tablet is a Presargonic Lagash administrative receipt, from the great archive of Girsu (Tello) dating to roughly the 24th century BCE. It records a delivery of 1,160 bundles of rope or cordage, moving from a work gang of grass- or fodder-cutters through a chain of named officials into a storehouse, all overseen by En-iggal, a well-documented inspector (nubanda) who managed deliveries for the ruling household of Lagash. Tablets like this one are the backbone of what we know about Early Dynastic Sumerian bureaucracy — thousands of near-identical entries tracking raw materials, labor gangs, and storehouse intake with remarkable precision.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a delivery voucher: 1,160 bundles of rope were brought in and logged. The batch is associated with a person or account called Emelamsu, and it came from the crew of grass-cutters, handled by a man named Lu-kurrebigi and by the foreman who delivered it. The whole transaction was authorized by En-iggal, the inspector, and the rope was deposited in the storehouse belonging to (or named for) Mesandu. The clerk closed the record with the standard notation 'delivery: 2,' likely a sealing or entry count for this transaction within a larger set of tablets.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1,160 (2(gešʾu) minus 40) bundles of rope(-cord: sa ma-nu) Emelamsu(-) overseer: (the one who) delivered (them) — of the grass-cutters (u2 ku5-ra2), (via) Lu-kurrebigi; (under) En-iggal, the inspector (nubanda); (into) the storehouse of Mesandu. Delivery (i3-kux(DU)): 2.
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
2(gesz'u@c) la2 4(u@c) sa ma-nu e2-me-lam2-su3 ugula mu-de6 u2 ku5-ra2 lu2-kur-re2-bi2-gi en-ig-gal nu-banda3 ganun mes-an-du i3-kux(DU) 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 366. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221016) — 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.