Position in chronology
DP 426
About this tablet
This is a small clay administrative tablet from Girsu, part of the Early Dynastic Lagash state archive, dating to the reign of the ruler (ensi2) Lugalanda, roughly the 24th century BCE. It tallies quantities of wooden or reed beams and cut branch material harvested from a forest belonging to the 'Women's House' (e2-munus), a major institutional household of the Lagash state closely associated with the ensi2's wife — one of the best-documented administrative estates from this period. The closing notice that 'a peg was driven in it' likely marks the formal act of certifying or closing out this tally, and the tablet carries a cylinder-seal impression confirming its official status.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record tallies timber taken from the forest of the Women's House: 183 units of trimmed beams, 60 units of another type of beam, and 23 bundles of cut branch-tops. The account falls under the authority of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash. At the close, a marker peg was driven in to certify the record — the tablet ends with the number six, likely a check total or case count.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine183 base-units (ur2) of gesz-ur3 (reed/wood beams), plucked/trimmed (suh5-ha), 60 base-units (ur2) of gesz-ur3, the za3-gu2-la2 type, 23 cut branch-tips (pa-ku5 aga3) of gesz-ur3, from the grove (tir) of the Women's House (e2-munus), (by authority of) Lugalanda, ruler (ensi2) of Lagash: a peg/marker was driven in it (na ba-ni-ri) — 6.
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
3(gesz2@c) 3(asz@c) ur2 gesz-ur3 suh5-ha 1(gesz2@c) ur2 gesz-ur3 za3-gu2-la2 2(u@c) 3(asz@c) pa-ku5 aga3 gesz-ur3 tir e2-munus-ka lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz-ke4 na ba-ni-ri 6(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 426. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221076) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.