Position in chronology
Nik 1, 190
About this tablet
This small cushion-shaped tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello) is a routine livestock-inspection docket from the household administration of Baranamtarra, wife of Lugalanda, ruler (ensi2) of Lagash, around 2400 BCE. It records a discrepancy in a flock of three nanny-goats that had been reported missing but were then accounted for at a formal inspection (gurum2), with the overseer En-iggal — a well-known administrator who appears throughout the Lagash 'temple household' archive — certifying that the animals were restored to the care of the fattener responsible for them. Thousands of tablets like this survive from Baranamtarra's estate, giving historians an extraordinarily detailed picture of how palace and temple economies tracked livestock, labor, and personnel almost daily.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an inventory-control memo: three nanny-goats that had been listed as missing turned out to belong to the sheep flock after all. At a scheduled flock inspection, the fattener in charge of the animals — a man whose name is only partly legible, something like Munina-game — was found responsible for them. En-iggal, the household's overseer, checked and closed out the account, and the goats were formally handed back into the fattener's custody. The transaction was recorded under the authority of Baranamtarra, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash, and dated (apparently) to year 4.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 nanny-goats — (reported) lost, (which) turned up: it concerns the sheep(-flock). Inspection of the sheep(-flock): Munina-game(?), the fattener — for him, En-iggal, the overseer, set the boundary (i.e. settled/verified the account); it was returned into his hand. (Under the authority of) Baranamtarra, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash. 4.
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
3(asz@c) ud5 lul-gu e3-a udu-kam gurum2 udu-ka mu-ni-na-ga-me kuruszda-e mu-ra en-ig-gal nu-banda3 za3 bi2-szu4 szu-na i3-ni-gi4 bara2-nam-tar-ra dam lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz-ka 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 190. 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 (P221959) — 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.