Position in chronology
Nik 1, 132
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello), one of thousands of daily accounting records kept by temple or palace scribes to track food distributed to workers. It records flour issued to a cook named Alusisa for baking bread, bread consumed by a work crew, and a note connecting the ration to the towing or hauling of a large cargo boat (a magur-boat) — evidence of the labor logistics behind river transport in southern Mesopotamia around 2500-2350 BCE. A second, now largely broken, entry mentions a man named Ursag.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Five ban2 of coarse flour went to the cook Alusisa, who baked it into bread. Several lines here are too damaged to read. The bread was then eaten by a group of workers — thirty loaves were baked, ninety in all, using three ban2 of flour. This ration was tied to work on the magur-boat, which was being towed or hauled. The next part of the text is broken, but it picks up again with a man named Ursag, followed by a few illegible signs and the number seven; the rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 ban2 of dabin-flour (coarse flour) — for Alusisa, the cook: bread was baked (set out). [......] [......] [......] he/they ate (it) together with (him/them). Bread distributed: 30 (loaves) baked; 90 (in total). Its flour is 3 ban2. The magur-boat, towed/hauled. [......] Ursag. [x x] ...... 7.
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
5(ban2@c) dabin a-lu2-si-sa2 muhaldim ninda i3-du8 [...]-de3 [...] [...] e-da-gu7 ninda ba-an-ne2 3(u@c) du8 1(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) zi3-bi 3(ban2@c)-am6 ma2-gur8 du8-a [...] ur-sag [x x] x x 7(|ASZxDISZ@t|)?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 132. 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 (P221901) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.