Position in chronology
Nik 1, 171
About this tablet
This is a small, palm-sized sealed clay tablet — really a rounded 'bulla'-type docket — from the archives of the Early Dynastic city of Girsu, in what is now southern Iraq. It records the handover of a flock of sheep and goats — 3 ewes, several young lambs, and a couple of kids — from an overseer named Ur-igi to a shepherd named Ur-nigar, tied to the household of the god Ningirsu and dated to a barley-harvest festival month. Tablets like this were sealed with an official's cylinder seal (visible as impressions on the tablet's edges in the photo) to certify that livestock had properly changed hands within the temple economy, part of the vast bookkeeping apparatus that ran Sumerian city-state temples around 2400 BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record logs a small transfer of livestock: 3 ewes, 2 female lambs, 6 male lambs, and 2 kids. The animals were handed over under the authority of Ur-igi, the overseer, during the month of the barley-harvest festival. They belonged to the god Ningirsu's estate, delivered at the temple gate known as Ka-sura. Ur-nigar the shepherd received them — the tablet states simply that '(someone) gave them to him,' without naming who on the institutional side authorized the transfer. A final tally of 6, written in a special counting notation, closes out the record, likely marking a sub-total or sealed count for part of the flock.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 ewes, 2 female li-lambs, 6 male li-lambs, 2(?) kids, (under) Ur-igi, the overseer; month: "Festival of Barley-eating"; (of) Ningirsu, (at) Ka-sura (the gate); Ur-nigar, to the shepherd, he gave (them). 6 (total, in the sealed-count notation)
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
3(asz@c) u8 2(asz@c) munus li 6(asz@c) nita li 2(asz@c)#? masz ur-igi nu-banda3 iti ezem-sze-gu7 nin-gir2-su-ka-ka ka2-sur-ra ur-nigar sipa-ra e-na-szum2 6(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 171. 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 (P221940) — 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.