Position in chronology
Nik 1, 135
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Girsu (modern Tello), one of thousands of such day-to-day account records kept by temple or palace scribes around the mid-3rd millennium BCE. It logs disbursements of bread, emmer wheat, and barley groats (dabin) to named individuals — including a man called Ur-sag, another called Lugal-ša described as 'a man of Unug (Uruk),' and a cupbearer named Šeš-lu-du10 — each transaction checked off by a responsible official (maszkim). Tablets like this are the bookkeeping backbone of one of the world's earliest bureaucracies, showing how food and goods moved through an institutional household.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ration voucher. Someone issued 20 units of bread (the exact commodity term is broken) along with 3 ban2 of emmer wheat, and some amount of barley groats — the quantity is lost in a break — to a man named Ur-sag; an official named in the text was responsible for overseeing that transaction. Separately, 2 barig and 4 ban2 of barley groats went to Lugal-ša, described as a man from the city of Unug (Uruk), who is recorded as having received the goods. Another allotment went to Šeš-lu-du10, who held the position of cupbearer, again under the supervision of a named responsible official. The tablet closes with a total figure of 8, written with a special numeral sign.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[Bread — allotted]/[x measure, opened(?)]: 20 (units). 3 ban2 emmer (wheat). [x] dabin (barley groats) [...] Ur-sag (recipient). Its responsible official (maszkim-bi). 2 barig, 4 ban2 dabin (barley groats). Lugal-ša. Man of Unug. He received (it) (šu ba-ti). Šeš-lu-du10, the cupbearer (sagi). Its responsible official (maszkim-bi). 8 (total, complex numeral sign |ASZxDISZ@t|).
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
[ninda ba-an]-ne2 [x du8] 2(u) 3(ban2@c) ziz2 [x] dabin [...] ur#*-sag maszkim-bi 2(barig@c) 4(ban2@c) dabin lugal-sza3#? lu2 unu szu ba-ti szesz-lu2-du10 sagi maszkim-bi 8(|ASZxDISZ@t|)*
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 135. 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 (P221904) — 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.