Position in chronology
DP 382
About this tablet
This is a harvest receipt from Girsu, in the city-state of Lagash in southern Iraq, from around 2400 BCE. It records a flax harvest from a named field of the queen's household estate. The flax is sorted into three quality grades and counted in bundles. The estate was run by Bara-namtara, wife of the ruler Lugalanda, and the text shows how carefully this women's household managed its textile raw materials. The same archive shows the queen as a major economic figure in her own right.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Harvest record: 80 bundles of top-grade flax, 90 bundles of second-grade flax and 44 bundles of third-grade flax, taken from the garlic plot of the Ugig field. En-iggal, the estate overseer, had the flax pulled, and the foreman U2-U2 counted it. Dated to year 6 of the estate of Bara-namtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 80 bundles of selected flax, 90 bundles of second-grade flax, 44 bundles of third-grade flax: from the garlic plot of the Ugig field. En-iggal, the overseer (nu-banda), had it pulled (mu-SIG7). Reverse U2-U2, the foreman (ugula), counted it (lit. 'it was counted by his hand'). Year 6. Bara-namtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler (ensi) of Lagash.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) sa gu suh5-ha 1(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) sa gu us2 4(u@c) 4(asz@c) sa gu 3(disz@t)-kam-ma us2 ki szum2-ma GAN2 u3-gig-ka-ta en-ig-gal nu-banda3 mu-SIG7 U2-U2 ugula szu-ni ba-szid 6(|ASZxDISZ@t|) bara2-nam-tar-ra dam lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz-ka
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 382. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221032) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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