Position in chronology
Nik 1, 115
About this tablet
This is a very small clay tablet — barely larger than a thumb — recording a disbursement of barley from an administrative household in the city of Girsu, around the mid-third millennium BCE. It notes two quantities of grain, one described as 'standing' or standard-issue barley and the other tied to a silver-interest obligation, both measured in the large gur-saggal capacity unit, and both released ('brought out') to a boatman — someone who moved goods along the canals. Tiny receipts like this were the everyday bookkeeping of Early Dynastic temple and palace economies, tracking exactly how much grain left the storehouse and for whom.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a short receipt: 2 gur-saggal, 1 barig, and 2 ban2 of barley are recorded as standard grain stock, measured out in the large gur-saggal unit. A further 1 gur-saggal and 1 barig of barley is listed against a silver-interest charge. Both amounts were issued out of storage and handed over to a boatman. A final numeral, '3', closes the entry, though its exact function is unclear.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 gur-saggal, 1 barig, 2 ban2 of barley — standing (fixed) grain, [in] gur-saggal [measure]. 1 gur-saggal, 1 barig of barley — silver, interest-disbursement. Brought out (issued). Boatman. 3 (numeral, sign uncertain).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
2(asz@c) 1(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) sze gub-ba gur saggal 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) sze ku3 masz-ba e-ta-e11 ma2-lah5 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)?*
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 115. 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 (P221884) — 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.