Position in chronology
Nik 1, 137
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic account tablet from Girsu (modern Tello), recording the distribution of dabin-flour — a coarse barley flour — to named individuals and to a group of palace soldiers. Ur-ku3 and Su-si receive an initial (partly broken) large allotment measured in gur-saggal, a man named Me-an-nesi who works as a fuller receives one ban2, and a body of aga-us soldiers eat three ban2 of flour in the palace itself. Texts like this, from the archives of the Girsu institutional household around the mid-third millennium BCE, are the routine paperwork of a large temple or palace economy feeding its dependent personnel.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The record tracks flour rations issued from a storehouse. An amount of dabin-flour, measured in the large gur-saggal unit but with the exact quantity now broken away, went to two men, Ur-ku3 and Su-si, who signed for it. Separately, a worker named Me-an-nesi, identified as a fuller, received one ban2-measure of something (likely also flour) and took it in hand. Then three ban2 of dabin-flour were eaten by a group of soldiers or guardsmen stationed at the palace. The tablet closes with a total figure of 9, probably summing the recorded quantities or entries.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[x] gur-saggal (measure) of dabin-flour: Ur-ku3, (and) Su-si — they received (it) (šu ba-ti). 1 ban2 (measure): Me-[an]-ne2-si, the fuller (tug2-du8) — he received (it) (šu ba-ti). 3 ban2 of dabin-flour: the aga3-us2 (gendarmes/soldiers), in the palace (e2-gal-la), ate/consumed (i3-gu7) (it). Total: 9.
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
[x] dabin [gur saggal] ur-ku3 su-si szu ba-ti 1(ban2@c) me-[an]-ne2-si tug2-du8 szu ba-ti 3(ban2@c) dabin aga3-us2-ne e2-gal-la i3-gu7 9(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 137. 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 (P221906) — 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.