Position in chronology
Nik 1, 070
About this tablet
This is a small pillow-shaped clay tablet from Girsu (modern Tello) in southern Iraq, dating to the Early Dynastic III period, roughly the 24th century BCE. It records a disbursement of emmer wheat — seed grain — handed out by En-iggal, a well-documented overseer (nubanda) who managed the household estate of the Lagash ruling family under kings Lugalanda and Urukagina. The recipient, a man named U2-U2, is identified as someone without a personal allotment in the GAN2-UL field, so the institution issued him seed grain instead — a glimpse into how the temple-palace economy supported landless or dependent workers.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The storehouse called Ki-sala issued 2 gur and 3 ban2 of emmer wheat, measured by the standard "chief" measure. This was seed grain given to a worker named U2-U2, described as someone with no allotment in the GAN2-UL field, in his capacity as an ušdura (a dependent laborer). The overseer En-iggal authorized and recorded the transaction during the month of sheep-shearing. The tablet notes this as the fourth such disbursement.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 gur 3 ban2 emmer, by the saggal ("chief") measure — [emmer-seed] for the (person) [lacking a share] in the GAN2-UL field: U2-U2, the ušdura (u2-du-ra), (by) En-iggal, the nubanda (overseer), month: "sheep-shearing" (ga2-udu-ur4), from the Ki-sala storehouse (e2 ki-sal4-la) it was issued — 4th (entry/time).
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
2(asz@c) 3(ban2@c) ziz2 gur saggal [ziz2 numun] GAN2 [UL nu]-tuku-sze3 U2-U2 [u2]-du-ra en-ig-gal nu-banda3 iti ga2-udu-ur4-ka e2 ki-sal4-la-ta e-ta-gar 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 070. 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 (P221839) — 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.