Position in chronology
MVN 03, 018
About this tablet
This is a small cushion-shaped administrative tablet from Girsu (ancient Lagash), dating to the Early Dynastic period, roughly the 24th century BCE. It records a delivery of barley — grown on a field belonging to a person or place called Uru'a — into the granary of the goddess Baba, handled by an official named Enigal who bears the title 'overseer' (nu-banda3), a figure well known from other Lagash temple-household records of this era. Tablets like this are the everyday bookkeeping of the great temple estates of pre-Sargonic Lagash, tracking grain in and out of storage under named officials.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records that 4 large-measure gur of barley — grain harvested from the field of Uru'a — were brought into the granary of the goddess Baba at Lagash. The transaction was handled by the overseer Enigal. A final notation, 'isi: 2,' likely closes out the entry, perhaps as a tally or date mark, though its exact meaning is unclear.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 gur saggal of barley — barley of the field of Uru'a — Enigal, the overseer, (into) the granary of Baba, in Lagash. isi: 2.
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
4(asz@c) sze gur saggal sze GAN2# [uri3]-ru2-a-kam# en-ig#-[gal] nu-banda3 ganun pa4-pa4-ka# lagasz-a i3-si 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — MVN 03, 018. 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 (P222200) — 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.