Position in chronology
Nik 1, 089
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from the temple/palace archive of Girsu (ancient Tello), part of the well-known Nikolski I collection from the Early Dynastic city-state of Lagash. It records disbursements of emmer wheat to five named individuals — one of whom is Lugalanda, a historical ruler of Lagash — with the transaction totaled, partly spent, and the remainder recorded as held in storage, all under the supervision of the official En-iggal, the 'inspector' (nu-banda3) who appears constantly in this archive. Tablets like this formed the backbone of Lagash's grain accounting bureaucracy roughly 4,400 years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records grain rations of emmer wheat, measured in gur and barig, given out to five people: Lu-zi got 7 gur 2 barig, E-lu got 7 gur 2 barig, TUMxGAN2-ra got 2 gur 2 barig, En-entarzi got 5 gur, and Lugalanda got 5 gur. Adding it all up, the scribe notes a total of 32 gur minus 2 barig of top-quality emmer. Of that amount, 4 gur 2 barig had already been spent, leaving 23 gur still in storage. The transaction was overseen by En-iggal, the inspector, and closes with a note that 5 (units) were given over to someone.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine7 gur 2 barig emmer (saggal-standard) — Lu-zi. 7 gur 2 barig emmer — E-lu. 2 gur 2 barig emmer — TUMxGAN2-ra. 5 gur emmer — En-entarzi. 5 gur emmer — Lugalanda. Total: 32 (less 2 barig) gur emmer, saggal-standard. Therefrom: 4 gur 2 barig emmer was expended. Left in store: 23 gur emmer. En-iggal, the inspector (nu-banda3). He gave to him: 5.
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
7(asz@c) 2(barig@c) ziz2 gur saggal lu2-zi 7(asz@c) 2(barig@c) ziz2 e2-lu2 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) ziz2 |TUMxGAN2@t|-ra 5(asz@c) ziz2 en-en3-tar-zi 5(asz@c) ziz2 lugal-an-da szu-nigin2 3(u@c) 2(asz@c) la2 2(barig@c) ziz2 gur saggal sza3-bi-ta 4(asz@c) 2(barig@c) ziz2 e-ta-zi-zi ki-a tak4-a 2(u@c) 3(asz@c) ziz2 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 e-ne-szum2-mu 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 089. 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 (P221858) — 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.