Position in chronology
Erm 14333
About this tablet
A grain-accounting tablet from Girsu, in the Sumerian state of Lagash, written some 4,400 years ago. It records a very large delivery of barley — nearly 400 gur, tens of thousands of liters — harvested from a field called "Small Gir-gir" that belonged to the ruler's own subsistence estate. A foreman named Inima-ni-zi handed the grain over, and En-iggal, the chief overseer of the household administration known from dozens of tablets in this archive, put it into storage in the market-house. Texts like this are the backbone of the Lagash palace archive, showing exactly how a Sumerian city-state tracked the produce of its own fields.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt for 392 gur, 2 barig, 2 ban of barley (large-measure gur), from the estate holdings — specifically the harvest of the field called "Small Gir-gir," part of the governor's own subsistence land. The foreman Inima-ni-zi turned the grain in, and the overseer En-iggal placed it in the market-house storehouse. Dated to the sixth year.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine392 gur 2 barig 2 ban2 of barley (by the saggal gur measure), barley of the estate property (nig-en-na), (from) the field "Small Gir-gir," the subsistence allotment of the ruler (ensi). Inima-ni-zi, the foreman, returned it into (his) hand. En-iggal, the overseer, stored it in the market-house. 6th (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
6(gesz2@c)? 3(u@c) 2(asz@c)#? 2(barig@c) 2(ban2@c)? sze# gur saggal sze nig2-en-na GAN2 GIR2@g-GIR2@g tur szuku# ensi2#-ka inim-ma-ni-zi ugula szu-a bi2-gi4 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 e2-ganba-ka-ka i3#?-si#? 6(|ASZxDISZ@t|)?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Erm 14333. 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 (P225741) — 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.