Position in chronology
DP 535
About this tablet
This is a small pre-Sargonic administrative tablet from Girsu, dated to the reign of Urukagina (also spelled Irikagina), king of Lagash, roughly 2350 BCE — one of thousands of everyday bookkeeping records kept by the temple household of the goddess Baba, which was run in this period by the queen, Sasa, wife of Urukagina. It records an issue of ten gur of barley — seed grain and fodder for the plow oxen — handed out by the overseer Enigal from Baba's granary to a plowman named Anekura, for cultivating a specific named field. Tablets like this one are the backbone of what we know about how a great Sumerian temple estate organized farm labor, draft animals, and grain reserves, month by month.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ten gur of barley — seed grain and fodder for the plow oxen — was issued in the month called 'Oxen-are-led-forth.' It went to Anekura, the head plowman, for use on the field called U'igga. Enigal, the estate overseer, released it from Baba's granary on his behalf. The grain was drawn from Baba's granary stock, under the authority of Sasa, wife of King Urukagina of Lagash. The record closes with the numeral '2,' likely a tally or reference figure for the transaction.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 gur-saggal: seed grain, barley consumed by the oxen (draft-team fodder). Month: 'Oxen-are-led-forth' (gu4-ra2-bi2-mu2-a). For Anekura, the chief plowman, for the field U'igga — Enigal, the overseer, from the granary of Baba set (it) out for him. Barley, granary-stock, of Baba, (under authority of) Sasa, wife of Urukagina, king of Lagash. 2.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(u@c) sze-numun sze gu4-re6 gu7 gur saggal iti gu4-ra2-bi2-mu2-a a2-ne2-kur-ra sag-apin-ra GAN2 u3-gig-ga-sze3 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 ganun ba-ba6-ta e-na-ta-gar sze u2-rum ba-ba6 sa6-sa6 dam URU-KA-gi-na lugal lagasz-ka 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 535. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221185) — 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.