Position in chronology
Genava 26, 5
About this tablet
An administrative dairy record from the city of Girsu in southern Iraq, written around 2350 BCE during the reign of Lugalanda, ruler of the Lagash state. It logs deliveries of ghee, goat-milk oil, and dried cheese brought in by the state's goat-herders as ceremonial 'mašdaria' contributions, poured out (i.e., delivered) by an overseer at a festival building, and dated to the ruler's sixth year. Tablets like this show how tightly the Lagash palace tracked even small quantities of festival foodstuffs — and this one names the ruler Lugalanda himself, shortly before he was displaced by the reformer Uru-inimgina.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Delivery record: one jug of clarified butter — festival-contribution oil — from the goat-herders. One jug plus 3 liters of goat-milk oil and about 70 liters of dried cheese, handed in by A-inun. Ten liters of oil from Ur-Ebabbar — goat oil, likewise from the goat-herders. All of this was for the ruler Lugalanda; a line here is broken. At the festival house, Ur-igi-ama-še, the overseer, poured it out (delivered it) on his behalf. Filed in year six of the reign.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 jug of butter oil (ghee), 2. oil of the mašdaria-offering, 3. (from) the shepherds of the goats; 4. 1 jug (and) 3 sila of goat oil, 5. 1 barig (and) 1 ban of kashk-cheese: 6. A-inun; 7. 10 sila of oil: Ur-Ebabbar — 8. goat oil, 9. (from) the shepherds of the goats. 10. (For) Lugalanda [...] 11. in the house of the festival, 12. Ur-igi-ama-še, 13. the overseer, 14. poured it out for him. 6th (year).
Our translation engine — Fable 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) dug i3 nun i3 masz-da-re-a sipa ud5-ke4-ne 1(asz@c) dug 3(disz@t) sila3 i3 ud5 1(barig@c) 1(ban2@c) ga'ar a-i3-nun 1(u@c) sila3 i3 ur-e2-babbar2# i3 ud5 sipa ud5-ke4-ne lugal-an-da [...] e2 ezem#-da-ka ur-igi-ama-sze3 nu-banda3 e-na-de2 6(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Genava 26, 5. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, Switzerland (P225846) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-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.