Position in chronology
DP 546
About this tablet
A farm-account from the estate administration of Lagash at Girsu, around 2350 BCE. A locust swarm has stripped a little over two and a half bur3 of arable land — roughly 17 hectares — and the estate responds by releasing grain from its new granary: eight large gur for seed and ox-fodder, plus a further gur of barley to be broadcast over the damaged field. The issuing officer is En-iggal, the chief administrator of the ruling family's household, whose name appears on hundreds of these tablets; the grain goes to Inim-ma-ni-zi, the head plowman responsible for the replanting. It is one of the oldest surviving records of an agricultural disaster and the bureaucratic paperwork generated to repair it.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A little over two and a half bur3 of field has been eaten by locusts. To replant it, the estate releases eight large gur of grain — seed for sowing plus feed for the plow-oxen — and one further gur of barley to be scattered over the field. The grain is handed to Inim-ma-ni-zi, the head plowman. Issued in the month of the wool allotment by En-iggal, the overseer, out of the new granary, in year 4.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 bur3 2 eše3 of field(-land), eaten by locusts: its seed-grain and the barley consumed by the oxen — 8 gur (by the) saggal (measure); 1 (gur) barley, barley to be strewn upon the field — (for) Inim-ma-ni-zi, the chief plowman. Month: "wool-allotment." En-iggal, the overseer, from the new storehouse issued it to him. 4th (year).
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(bur3@c) 2(esze3@c) iku bir5-re2 gu7-a sze-numun sze gu4-re6 gu7-bi 8(asz@c) gur saggal 1(asz@c) sze sze asza5-ge tag-tag-dam inim-ma-ni-zi sag-apin-ra iti siki-ba-a en-ig-gal nu-banda3 ganun gibil-ta e-na#-ta-gar 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 546. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221196) — 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.