Position in chronology
Nik 1, 202
About this tablet
This small cushion-shaped clay tablet is an administrative memorandum from the state-run household of the rulers of Lagaš (southern Iraq), dated to the reign of Lugalanda, roughly the 24th century BCE. It records the movement of donkeys — two female jennies of a named type are allotted to a woman named Geme-Nanše, while an official, En-iggal the overseer, sees to their handling and a herdsman named En-ku is entrusted with four animals. Texts like this come from the vast archive of the Bau/Lagash temple-household economy, which tracked livestock, rations, and personnel down to individual animals and named recipients.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two female donkeys of the 'Šulgi' type were issued to Geme-Nanše by order of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagaš. This was recorded in the month of the Festival of the King of Urub. En-iggal, the overseer, took charge of the transaction, and En-ku, the herdsman in charge of the special šaganx-breed donkeys, was given four animals.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 female donkeys (jennies), Šulgi-type — Lugalanda, ruler of Lagaš, to Geme-Nanše allotted (gave). Month: 'Festival of the king of Urub.' En-iggal, the overseer, took (them) in charge (placed at the boundary/in his keeping). En-ku, herdsman of šaganx-donkeys, was given: 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
2(asz@c) munus-ama ansze |SZUL.GI| lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz-ke4 geme2-nansze-ra e-na-ba iti ezem-lugal-uru11-ka-ka en-ig-gal nu-banda3 za3 bi2-szu4 en-ku4 sipa szaganx(AMA)-ra e-na-szum2 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 202. 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 (P221971) — 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.