Position in chronology
MCS 4, 012 01
About this tablet
This small, lentil-shaped clay tablet is a herding account from the city-state of Lagash in southern Iraq, dating to the reign of the reformer-king Urukagina (also read Uru-inimgina), around 2350 BCE. It records a flock of goats — dozens of nanny goats plus a kid and a billy goat — placed in the care of three named herdsmen, with the king's name invoked to authorize or date the transaction. Tablets like this were part of the vast bookkeeping apparatus that tracked the temple and palace herds of Presargonic Lagash, one of the best-documented bureaucracies of the ancient world.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a livestock tally: ninety-one nanny goats, one healthy weaned kid, and one healthy billy goat are recorded as being in the charge of three men — Amar-ezem, Ur-nuda, and Edalu. The document is dated or authorized under Urukagina, king of Lagash, and closes with a numeral notation ('7') whose exact bureaucratic function — perhaps a tally total, a docket number, or part of a date formula — is not fully clear from the text alone.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine91 nanny goats, 1 kid, in good condition, 1 he-goat, in good condition, (under) Amar-ezem, Ur-nuda, Edalu. Urukagina, king of Lagash. 7 (notation: ASZxDISZ numeral sign)
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(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) 1(asz@c) ama-ud5 1(asz@c)# []asz2#-gar3 sza3-du10 1(asz@c) masz-nita sza3-du10 amar-ezem ur-nu-da e-da-lu5 URU-KA-gi-na lugal lagasz 7(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — MCS 4, 012 01. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: World Museum Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (P386436) — 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.