Position in chronology
Nik 1, 101
About this tablet
This small early-dynastic clay tablet from Girsu (modern Tello) is a barley ration account, part of the temple or estate administration of the city-state of Lagash around 2400 BCE. It records grain allotments — measured in the large 'sag-gal' gur — issued to two named workers, one of them a 'digger' (a laborer assigned to canal or earthwork projects), under the authority of a labor overseer. Tablets like this one are the everyday bureaucratic residue of one of the world's earliest administered economies, where scribes tracked food rations owed to state or temple dependents by name, occupation, and supervising official.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a grain-ration voucher. It records that Lugal-ra, son of U'uda, was allotted 2 gur and 2 barig of barley (using the standard large gur measure) as his regular ration. A second worker, Ur-nu, a digger by occupation, received a smaller allotment: 1 gur minus 4 ban2 of barley. Both men belonged to a work-gang of diggers overseen by a labor chief, and the transaction was processed or authorized by an official named Inim-Enlila-andab. The account closes with a tally figure of 5, likely a running total connected to the workforce or rations covered by this entry.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2(gur) 2(barig) barley, standing ration (gur, sag-gal measure) — for Lugal-ra, son of U'uda. 1(gur) less 4(ban2) barley, standing ration — (for) Ur-nu, the digger-man. (The) diggers, (under) the chief of the troop (gal-UN). Inim-Enlila-andab (has taken charge / received). 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
2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) sze gub-ba gur saggal lugal-ra dumu u2-da 1(asz@c) la2 4(ban2@c) sze gub-ba ur-nu lu2 dun-a dun-dun gal-UN inim-en-lil2-la2-an-dab5 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 101. 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 (P221870) — 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.