Position in chronology
Nik 1, 177
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How to Read Cuneiform: What 102,246 Tablets Actually Say
This tablet is one of the primary sources examined in that investigation.
Read the investigationAbout this tablet
This is a small, rounded 'pillow-shaped' clay tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello), dating to the Early Dynastic period, around the mid-third millennium BCE — one of the compact administrative or check-tablets used by the temple bureaucracy of Lagash to tally livestock holdings. It records a herd count: hundreds of ewes reckoned apart from their lambs, dozens of oxen reckoned apart from cows, and a smaller number of donkeys, followed by a running total, two named individuals, and a note involving a scribe who apparently reviewed or reissued the reckoning. Tablets of this exact round, cushion-like shape are typical of short-form livestock accounts or verification memos from the Lagash state economy, distinct from the larger flat tablets used for longer administrative archives.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet tallies livestock: 660 ewes, not counting their lambs; 24 oxen, not counting the cows; and 16 donkeys. The scribe adds these up and gives a total. Two people are named — Na-e-a and Lugal-mu — apparently connected to the count 'by his word,' meaning the figures rest on someone's spoken authorization or report. A scribe is noted as having reviewed, repeated, or reissued the record — essentially double-checking or re-copying the tally. The tablet closes with a short, hard-to-parse notation and what looks like a sealed or marked total of 4, likely some kind of verification mark whose exact meaning is now lost to us.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine660 ewes — excluding the lambs; 24 oxen — excluding the cows; 16 donkeys. Its total (gu2-bi). Na-e-a, Lugal-mu, by his word/statement (du11-ga-na). The scribe repeated (verified/reissued) (it) (mu-gi4-a). ba-ra (obscure). Sealed: 4 (he2-su 4).
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(gesz'u@c) 1(gesz2@c) u8 sila4-bi-ta 2(u@c) 4(asz@c) gu4 ab2-ta 1(u@c) 6(asz@c) ansze gu2-bi na-e-a lugal-mu du11-ga-na dub-sar mu-gi4-a ba-ra he2-su 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 177. 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 (P221946) — 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.