Position in chronology
MVN 03, 005
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic accounting tablet from Girsu (ancient Lagash), roughly 2400 BCE, recording bundles of cut reed measured out for storage in the temple economy. Reed was a staple raw material in southern Mesopotamia — used for baskets, mats, roofing, and fuel — so quantities of it were tallied and totaled just like grain or livestock. The overseer named Enigal (En-ig-gal, nu-banda3) is a well-known administrator who appears repeatedly in the Lagash temple archives of this period, managing deliveries into named storehouses such as the 'House at the Edge of the City.' The tablet itself is badly worn — its obverse face is almost entirely eroded smooth, and only the reverse preserves legible sign traces.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This worn account tablet tallies deliveries of reed bundles. One entry lists roughly ten bundles, damaged; another 43 bundles; then a note about 'cut reed.' After a gap, a phrase reading something like 'good word' appears, followed by a much larger lot of 300 bundles of cut reed. A line marks this as the second granary's entry. The scribe then gives a running total — several thousand bundles of reed in all — checked and signed off by the overseer Enigal. The text breaks again, and the surviving end records that a delivery of reed was received at the storehouse known as the 'House at the Edge of the City,' with a final quantity of one (unit) noted. Much of the tablet, including most of the front face, is too eroded to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[x] 1(u@c)(?) bundles of reed ... 43 bundles of reed [...] cut reed(s) [...] (break) ... "good word" (Inim-duga) 5(gešʼ2) [= 300] bundles of reed cut reed(s) ... (break) It is the 2nd granary. Total: [x] 2 šár 8 geš2 [= 7,680+x] bundles of reed. Enigal, the overseer (nu-banda3). [...] (break) (To) the storehouse "House at the Edge of the City": delivered: 1.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 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
[x] 1(u@c)#? sa gi# x 4(u@c) 3(asz@c) sa gi# [...] gi# [ku5-ra2] [...] x [...] inim#-du10#-[ga] 5(gesz2@c) sa gi# gi ku5#-[ra2] x [...] guru7 2(disz@t)-kam-ma-am6# [szu]-nigin2# [x] 2(szar2@c) 8(gesz2@c) sa gi [en]-ig-gal nu-banda3 [...] x [...] e2 za3 iri-ka-ka i3-kux(DU) 1(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — MVN 03, 005. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P222188) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-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.