Position in chronology
FAOS 15/2, 125
About this tablet
A wage-and-ration record from the city of Girsu in the Sumerian state of Lagash, around 2370 BCE, from the household administration of Baranamtara — the wife of the ruler Lugalanda and one of the most powerful women of the Early Dynastic period, who ran a large economic institution in her own name. The tablet records her paying out sheep fleeces: one each to three laborers who hauled a boat bringing barley by water, alongside wool issued to an official who weighed the goods. It is a small window onto how grain moved by canal and how workers were paid in kind, not coin.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A quantity of wool and sheep fleeces was paid out. Nimgir-ešatum, the official who weighed and measured the goods, delivered (or received) his share, and three men who hauled the barge received one sheep fleece apiece — these were the men who brought the barley shipment in by water. The payment was authorized and distributed by Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, the ruler of Lagash. Dated to the second year. The opening lines with the exact wool quantity are broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [x (units of) wool, sheep fleeces,] 2. [delivered (by) Nimgir-eša]tum, 3. the measurer of goods; 4. 3 men who hauled the ma-sa (boat-load?) 5. — one sheep fleece each — 6. [received (it)]. 7. They are the men who brought the barley by water. 8. Baranamtara, 9. wife of Lugalanda, 10. the ruler 11. of Lagash, 12. allotted (it) to them. (Year) 2.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[x siki bar-udu] [nimgir-esz3-a]-tum2 lu2#-nig2-ag2 3(asz@c) lu2# ma#-sa2 il2#-la bar# udu 1(disz@t)-ta [szu ba-ti] lu2 sze a DU-a-me bara2-nam-tar-ra dam lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz#-ka-ke4 e-ne#-ba 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — FAOS 15/2, 125. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: J. Pierpont Morgan Library Collection, Yale Babylonian Collection, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (P227560) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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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.