Position in chronology
Nik 1, 072
About this tablet
This is a small clay administrative tablet from Girsu (modern Tello), one of thousands of Early Dynastic III economic records kept by temple and estate scribes in southern Iraq around 2400 BCE. It tracks barley — some measured out from a storehouse ('the house of the courtyard'), some assigned as seed-grain and ox-fodder for a field, and portions credited to a steward and to named individuals, including a worker described as a 'hauling man.' It closes with a month-name, 'the Festival of Barley-Eating of Ningirsu,' anchoring the transaction in the local temple calendar of the god Ningirsu, patron deity of Girsu. Texts like this one (published in the Nikolski/Nik 1 series from the Hermitage collection) form the backbone of our knowledge of Sumerian temple-household bookkeeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record tracks barley accounts tied to a temple storehouse in Girsu. An amount of barley just under a certain quantity — associated with a person or item whose name is lost — was measured out using the standard gur-saggal unit and released from the courtyard storehouse. Separately, 3 gur of a barley type called U2-U2 is recorded as belonging to the steward. Additional barley — seed-grain and ox-fodder — was allocated for a good, small plot of land under the responsibility of a man named Nin-girsu-lu-mu, described as a hauling laborer, and credited to someone named Inimanizi. The entry is dated to the month called 'Festival of Barley-Eating,' the harvest festival of the god Ningirsu. The final line is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[x] minus 4 ban2 barley — [x]-nam — gur-saggal (measure). From the house of the courtyard, it was disbursed. 3 gur barley, U2-U2 (barley/plant-type), it is the steward's. Seed-grain, ox-fodder barley, for the good small field — Nin-girsu-lu-mu, the hauling-worker (lu2-dun-a), for Inimanizi. Month: 'Festival of barley-eating,' (festival) of Ningirsu. [x x]-u2 (broken).
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
[x] la2 4(ban2@c) sze [x]-nam gur saggal e2 ki-sal4-la-ta e-ta-gar 3(asz@c) sze U2-U2 agrig-kam sze-numun sze gu4 gu7 GAN2 sa6-ga tur-sze3 nin-gir2-su-lu2-mu lu2 dun-a inim-ma-ni-zi-ra iti ezem-sze-[gu7] [nin]-gir2*-su*-ka [x x]-u2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 072. 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 (P221841) — 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.