Position in chronology
DP 367
About this tablet
This is a small Presargonic (Early Dynastic IIIb, c. 24th century BCE) administrative tablet from Girsu (modern Tello), the temple city near ancient Lagash. It records the movement of bundled cord or rope — 96 bundles in a first delivery and 40 in a second — handled by an official named Enigal, who bears the title nu-banda3 ('overseer'). Enigal appears frequently in the archive of the Bau/Baranamtara temple household at Lagash as the manager responsible for agricultural and garden resources, and tablets like this one are routine internal bookkeeping: tracking exactly how much material moved from one storage point (a garden gatehouse) to another (the garden's own storeroom).
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet logs two shipments of bundled rope or cord passing through the hands of Enigal, the estate overseer. The first batch came to 96 bundles; a second batch added 40 more. Enigal took the material out of storage at the garden gatehouse and carried it over to the garden's storeroom for safekeeping. A closing notation totals the transaction as two separate deliveries — the kind of everyday inventory entry a temple estate's administration would have kept by the hundreds.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine96 bundles (sa) of cord/rope — the reckoned (total): the first (delivery) — it was brought. 40 bundles (sa) of cord/rope — the reckoned (total): the second (delivery) — it was brought. Enigal, the overseer, from the garden of the gate-house removed (them); to the storehouse of the garden he brought (them). Total: 2 (deliveries).
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(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) 6(asz@c) sa ma-nu <1(disz@t)> de6-a-am6 4(u@c) sa ma-nu 2(disz@t)-kam-ma de6-a-am6 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 kiri6 e2-ku4-ta e-ta-gar ganun kiri6-sze3 e-ma-de6 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 367. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221017) — 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.