Position in chronology
Nik 1, 128
About this tablet
This small perforated clay object is not a flat tablet but a 'basket-of-tablets' label — a docket that was once tied by string (through the surviving hole) to a basket holding a group of administrative tablets, identifying their contents at a glance. It records barley belonging to the central institutional stores (nig2-en-na) and its movement (bala-a) between field and granary, kept in the household of Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler (ensi2) of the city-state of Lagash. Baranamtara is a well-documented historical figure — she ran an extensive economic household of her own within the Lagash state around 2400 BCE, and hundreds of tablets from her archive (the 'Nik 1' series, now mostly in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg) survive. This tiny object is essentially an ancient filing label — a physical index card for a batch of grain-accounting records.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a filing tag that was once attached to a basket of grain-account tablets. It says: barley belonging to the ruler's central stores, covering the turnover of grain between the field and the granary, is on hand and accounted for. The batch belongs to the household of Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash, and the tag notes that 3 tablets are grouped inside the basket it was tied to.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineBasket-of-tablets (docket): Barley of the nig₂-en-na (the ruler's/central household's stores), [the field's] bala-a (rotation/turnover), [the granary's] bala-a (rotation/turnover) — it is at hand (in her custody). Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler (ensi₂) of Lagash. 3 (tablets, numeral sign |AŠxDIŠ@t|).
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
pisan-dub sze nig2-en-na [asza5-ga] bala-a [ganun]-na bala-a e-da-gal2 bara2-nam-tar-ra dam lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz-ka 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 128. 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 (P221897) — 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.