Position in chronology
Nik 1, 167
About this tablet
This small clay tablet is a routine administrative receipt from the Early Dynastic archive of Girsu (Lagash), recording the delivery of a single sheep as a customary 'mašdaria' offering. It names Baranamtara, the well-documented wife of the ruler (ensi) Lugalanda of Lagash, whose own household administration produced hundreds of surviving economic tablets — among the earliest evidence anywhere for a woman managing a substantial institutional estate. The sheep was handed over to the 'Women's Household' during the month of the Festival of the goddess Baba, delivered by a herdsman/fattener named Enku. Such texts are the bookkeeping backbone of a temple-and-palace economy nearly 4,500 years old.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One sheep is recorded as a mašdaria-offering — the customary delivery gift owed on certain occasions. The next lines are broken, but they evidently named someone's wife before continuing with Baranamtara (the well-known wife of the ruler Lugalanda of Lagash). The delivery took place in the month of the Festival of Baba and the sheep was handed over to the Women's Household. Enku, the livestock fattener, was the one who brought it in; a final notation reads '2,' likely a tally or docket mark.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sheep — mašdaria-offering. [...] [wife of ...] Baranamtara. Month: "Festival of Baba." To the Women's Household it was delivered. Enku, the fattener, brought (it); 2.
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
1(asz@c) udu masz-[da]-re#-[a] [...] [dam ...] bara2-nam-tar-ra iti ezem-ba-ba6-ka e2-munus-a mu-na-kux(DU) en-ku3 kuruszda-e ba-de6 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 167. 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 (P221936) — 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.