Position in chronology
HSS 03, 45
About this tablet
This is a small pre-Sargonic (Early Dynastic IIIb) administrative tablet from the state archives of Lagash, found at Girsu (modern Tello), roughly the 24th century BCE. It records a disbursement of sheep hides — some with the wool scraped off — issued to a leatherworker, drawn from the stores of the 'Women's Household,' the economic estate attached to the ruler's queen. The transaction is overseen by En-iggal, a well-known inspector (nu-banda3) who appears repeatedly in the Lagash administrative archive under the rulers Lugalanda and Uruinimgina. Tablets like this one are the bookkeeping backbone of one of the world's earliest bureaucratic states.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ten sheep hides, with the wool scraped off, and two more hides — associated with someone called (or marked) UL LAK470-ride and with a person named Amar-Ashnan — were issued to the leatherworker. En-iggal, the overseer, handled the transaction in the month called 'nig-ka-ika' (roughly, the canal-mouth month), drawing the goods from the stock of the Women's Household, the queen's estate. The record closes by noting that he gave them over, with a final tally mark of one.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 sheep hides, plucked (wool removed) — bar-sar-ra. 2 hides — UL LAK470-ri-de3. Amar-Ašnan, for/to the leatherworker. En-iggal, the overseer (nu-banda3). Month: 'nig2-ka-i7-ka-ka' (the canal-mouth/canal-completion month). From the E2-munus (the Women's Household/estate). He gave (it) to him: 1 (total/unit — ASZxDISZ notation).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(u@c) kusz udu bar sar-ra kusz# 2(disz@t) UL LAK470-ri-de3 amar-asznan aszgab-ra# en-ig-gal nu-banda3 iti nig2-ka-i7-ka-ka e2-munus-ta e-na-szum2 1(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — HSS 03, 45. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (P221354) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.