Position in chronology
Erm 14330
About this tablet
This is a small clay administrative docket from Girsu (ancient Lagash), recording the disbursement of a single goat around 2400 BCE. It belongs to the well-known archive of Baranamtara, the powerful queen (wife of the ruler Lugalanda) who managed a large estate household with its own scribes, cupbearers, and livestock fatteners. Texts like this one tracked exactly which official authorized an animal's release, who physically carried it, and who was ultimately accountable for it — the everyday bookkeeping of a palace kitchen or offering economy. The final number is likely a sequence or docket number within a larger batch of daily accounts.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One goat was issued and charged to Lisina's account. Queen Baranamtara authorized the allotment. Enlu the cupbearer carried the animal, and it was then consumed. Responsibility for it rests with Enku, the livestock fattener. This is record number 5 (in a series of such dockets).
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 goat, booked to the account of Lisina; Baranamtara had (it) allotted/assigned. Enlu, the cupbearer, carried it (along); (it was) consumed. (It is) Enku's, the fattener's — (tablet) 5.
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
1(asz@c) masz ki li9-si4-na-sze3 bara2-nam-tar-ra gesz be2-tag en-lu2 sagi e-da-de6 gu7-a en-ku3 kuruszda-kam 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Erm 14330. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation (P225738) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.