Position in chronology
Nik 1, 107
About this tablet
This is a small barley-accounting tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello), dating to the Early Dynastic IIIb period, roughly the 24th century BCE — part of the large Nikolski I archive of temple household records from the state of Lagash. It lists barley amounts assigned or 'standing' to the account of four named individuals, one entry explicitly tied to an interest payment reckoned in silver, and closes with a grand total taken in charge by an official named Inim-Enlila. Tablets like this are the routine bookkeeping of a great temple estate, tracking who owed, held, or received grain — the everyday machinery that kept a Sumerian city-state economy running nearly 4,500 years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a barley account. Inim-Enlil is credited with just under one gur of barley (1 gur minus 4 ban2). Nin-girsu-lu-mu receives the identical amount. Ur-pu is allotted a larger share, 1 gur 2 barig 4 ban2. Amar-ezem's entry is different in kind: 1 barig of barley recorded as an interest payment reckoned in silver, rather than a plain allocation. Adding these up, the scribe totals 3 gur 2 barig 2 ban2 of barley in the standard measure. The official Inim-Enlila is recorded as having received or taken charge of this total. The tablet ends with the numeral 6 written in a special notation whose exact bookkeeping role — perhaps a tally, a case number, or a cross-reference — is no longer clear.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gur (standard measure) minus 4 ban2 barley, standing (allocated) — Inim-Enlil. 1 gur minus 4 ban2 barley, standing (allocated) — Nin-girsu-lu-mu. 1 gur 2 barig 4 ban2 barley, standing (allocated) — Ur-pu. 1 barig barley, (as) silver-interest disbursement — Amar-ezem. Total: 3 gur 2 barig 2 ban2 barley, standing (allocated), standard gur (gur saggal). Inim-Enlila received (it). 6 (numeral notation, |AŠxDIŠ@t|; function uncertain).
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
1(asz@c) la2 4(ban2@c) sze gub-ba gur saggal inim-en-lil2 1(asz@c) la2 4(ban2@c) sze gub-ba nin-gir2-su-lu2-mu 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 4(ban2@c) sze gub-ba ur-pu2 1(barig@c) sze ku3 masz-ba amar-ezem szu-nigin2 3(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) sze gub-ba gur saggal inim-en-lil2-la2-an-dab5 6(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 107. 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 (P221876) — 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.