Position in chronology
DP 440
About this tablet
A delivery record from the temple household of the goddess Baba at Girsu, in the state of Lagash in southern Iraq, around 2350 BCE. It records hundreds of bundles of brushwood and bound poplar branches cut in the goddess's marshland thicket, shipped by boat, and brought into a workshop storehouse by En-iggal. En-iggal was the chief administrator of this household, known from hundreds of similar tablets, so the tablet shows how fuel and timber for craftsmen were gathered and logged.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Brushwood and poplar were cut in Baba's marsh forest: 132 large bundles of brushwood for fuel, 368 small bundles, and 607 tied bundles of poplar branches. The load was shipped by boat, and En-iggal, the overseer, received it into the craftsmen's workshop storehouse. The entry is dated to year 2.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse i 1: 132 large bundles of brushwood (fuel); i 2: 368 (i.e. 370 less 2) small bundles of brushwood; i 3: 607 bound bundles of poplar branches: ii 1: from the forest of the marsh ii 2: of Baba, ii 3: were loaded onto boat(s). Reverse i 1: En-iggal, i 2: the overseer (nu-banda), i 3: brought them into the storehouse of the craftsmen's workshop. ii: Year 2.
Our translation engine — Opus 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(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 2(asz@c) u2-bil2-la gal-gal 6(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) la2 2(asz@c) u2-bil2-la tur-tur 1(gesz'u@c) 7(asz@c) pa sa la2-a asal2 tir ambar ba-ba6-ta ma2-a e-me-gar en-ig-gal nu-banda3 ganun gesz-kin-ti i3-kux(DU) 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 440. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221090) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.