Position in chronology
Nik 1, 087
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic (Presargonic) administrative tablet from the city-state of Girsu, part of the Lagash administration active in the mid-third millennium BCE. It records the disbursement of a modest quantity of barley to a named individual, Baba-amadari, processed by an official called Šubur who held the title 'overseer' (nu-banda3), with the grain drawn from a storehouse referred to as the 'courtyard-house.' Thousands of palm-sized tablets like this one survive from the Lagash bureaucracy, forming one of the earliest detailed archives of institutional bookkeeping in human history — the everyday paperwork of grain rationing that kept a Sumerian temple or palace household running.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two gur and two barig of barley, measured by the standard 'head' (gur-saggal) measure, were issued to a man named Baba-amadari. Šubur, the overseer, handled the release of the grain, drawing it from the storehouse known as the courtyard-house. The transaction was recorded and marked with the number four, likely a tally or reference mark for this entry in a larger set of disbursement records.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 gur, 2 barig of muš-barley, by the gur-saggal ("head") standard measure — Baba-amadari; Šubur, the overseer (nu-banda3); from the courtyard-house (e2-ki-sal4-la), he gave (it) to him. 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
2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) sze-musz gur saggal ba-ba6-ama-da-ri2-ra szubur nu-banda3 e2 ki-sal4-la-ta e-na-szum2 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 087. 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 (P221856) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.