Position in chronology
Nik 1, 058
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from the city of Girsu (part of the state of Lagash) recording a large disbursement of barley rations — 682 gur, 2 barig, 2 ban2 measured in the 'big gur' capacity unit — issued under the authority of Urukagina, ruler of Lagash, and processed through his overseer Enigal. The rations are associated with the temple household of the god Ningirsu, Girsu's patron deity, and the entry is dated to the second day of an unnamed month in the ruler's fourth year. Tablets like this one are the bookkeeping backbone of the Lagash state economy around 2350 BCE, tracking how grain moved from central stores to workers and dependents.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A total of 682 gur, 2 barig and 2 ban2 of barley — measured by the 'big gur' standard — was issued as rations under the heading 'ru-lugal,' tied to the household of the god Ningirsu. The disbursement was authorized under Urukagina, ruler of Lagash, and carried out through his overseer Enigal, who handed the grain over on the second day of the month. A closing note marks this as the fourth (year or installment) of the account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(gešʼu) 1(geš2) 2(u) 2(aš) 2(barig) 2(ban2) — barley rations, big-gur (measure) RU-lugal of Ningirsu Urukagina ruler of Lagash [Enigal] the overseer gave (it) to them day 2 it is (year) 4
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(gesz'u@c) 1(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) sze-ba gur saggal RU-lugal nin-gir2-su-ka URU-KA-gi-na ensi2 lagasz [en-ig-gal] nu-banda3 e-ne-ba u4 2(disz@t)-kam 4(disz@t)? ba-am6
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 058. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation (P221827) — 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.