Position in chronology
DP 572
About this tablet
This is a small clay administrative tablet from Girsu, part of the huge Presargonic (Early Dynastic IIIb) archive of the temple household of the goddess Bau at Lagash, roughly 2400 BCE. It records the issue of a tool called 'gag-al' — likely wooden peg-hoes or digging implements — to a list of named workers, for use on a specific canal nicknamed 'Enlil has restored (it) by hand.' The disbursement was overseen by En-iggal, a well-documented supervisor (nubanda) active under the Lagash rulers Enentarzi, Lugalanda, and Urukagina. Texts like this let historians reconstruct the everyday labor organization behind Sumerian canal maintenance almost 4,400 years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a work-tool issue slip. Eight peg-hoes went to a man named Ursag; five (the number is a little unclear) to Ur-šerda; seven to Inim-du; six to E-nam; eleven to Šeš-lu-du; four to E-me; and eleven to Inim-mani-zi. The next entry is broken and lost. All told, 62 peg-hoes were handed out for work on the canal known as 'Enlil has restored it.' The overseer En-iggal signed off on the issue, and a closing note records that the tools were distributed to the workers, tagged with a special notation reading '3.'
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine8 hoe-pegs — Ursag. 5(?) — Ur-šerda. 7 — Inim-du. 6 — E-nam. 11 — Šeš-lu-du. 4 — E-me. 11 — Inim-mani-[zi]. [...] (break/lacuna) Total: 62 hoe-pegs. (For) the canal (called) "Enlil has restored (it) by hand" (i7-Enlil-le-šu-mu-gi4-a). En-iggal, the overseer. It was distributed to them: 3 (special notation).
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
8(asz@c) gag al ur-sag 5(asz@c)#? ur-szer7-da 7(asz@c) inim-du11 6(asz@c) e2-nam 1(u@c) 1(asz@c) szesz-lu2-du10 4(asz@c) e2-me 1(u@c) 1(asz@c) inim-ma-ni-[zi] [...] szu-nigin2 1(gesz2@c) 2(asz@c) gag al i7 en-lil2-le szu mu-gi4-a en-ig-gal nu-banda3 e-ne-ba 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 572. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221222) — 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.