Position in chronology
Erm 14334
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic economic tablet from Girsu (modern Tello), likely 24th century BCE, recording a barley transaction involving a merchant. It notes a quantity of barley — fifty-seven gur, a substantial amount — connected to a purchase price and a named recipient, with the standard closing phrase 'was given to him.' Such texts are everyday bookkeeping from the temple or palace economy of ancient Lagash/Girsu, tracking grain moving through merchants as payment or trade goods, and they are our main window into how commerce was organized in one of the world's earliest cities.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Fifty-seven gur of barley are recorded here, associated with a person named Utu-anzu, described as 'the merchant.' A following line — only partly legible — seems to name a category or personnel marker (rendered KAS4, AZ, a number, and NA), and then the text turns to the purchase price of the grain. The barley is identified as belonging to (or credited to) someone called ŠUL-bi2, and the standard closing formula states that it 'was given to him' — meaning an unnamed official or the administration handed it over to the recipient. The tablet ends with the number six, likely a subtotal or measure attached to the transaction. Overall this reads as a short receipt or accounting note for a barley purchase channeled through a merchant.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine57 gur barley (1(gešʼ2) la2 3(diš) gur — i.e. 60 minus 3) — Utu-anzu(?) — the merchant — KAS4(?) AZ(?) 6(ašʼc)(?) NA(?) — its purchase price (nig2-sa10) (…) — its barley: ŠUL-bi2(?) — was given to him (e-na-šum2) — 6 (|AŠxDIŠ@t|)
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(gesz2) la2 3(disz@t) gur# sze utu?-anzu2 dam-gar3 KAS4? AZ? 6(asz@c)? NA nig2!?-sa10 (x) sze-bi SZUL-bi2 e-na-szum2 6(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Erm 14334. 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 (P225742) — 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.