Position in chronology
HSS 03, 47
About this tablet
An administrative record from the city-state of Lagash in southern Iraq, around 2350 BCE, during the reign of Urukagina — the ruler famous for the earliest known social reforms. The household of Queen Sasa, which managed the estate of the goddess Baba, here counts a dozen nanny goats entrusted to a fattener named Ur-Baba, with the inspection carried out by the well-attested official En-iggal at a garden storehouse. Hundreds of such tablets survive from this queen's household, giving us one of the most detailed pictures of institutional economy anywhere in the early ancient world.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Livestock check: ten nanny goats held by the animal-fattener, plus two range-fed nanny goats from the steppe — twelve goats in all placed under his care. Ur-Baba is the fattener responsible for them. En-iggal, the captain (chief inspector), counted them out at the garden storehouse. These goats are the property of the goddess Baba — that is, of the estate run by Sasa, wife of Urukagina, king of Lagash. Filed in the king's seventh year.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 10 nanny goats of the fattener, 2. 2 nanny goats of the steppe: 3. goats placed under (his) charge — 4. Ur-Baba 5. is the fattener. 6. En-iggal, 7. the captain, 8. in the storehouse of the garden 9. called them out (registered them). 10. Goats, property of Baba. 11. Sasa, 12. wife of Urukagina, 13. king 14. of Lagash. 7th (year).
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
1(u@c) ud5 kuruszda 2(asz@c) ud5 edin-na ud5 dun-a ur-ba-ba6 kuruszda-kam en-ig-gal nu-banda3# ganun kiri6#-ka gu3# be2#-ra ud5 u2-rum ba-ba6 sa6-sa6# dam URU-KA-gi-na lugal lagasz-ka 7(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — HSS 03, 47. 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 (P221356) — 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.