Position in chronology
Nik 1, 205
About this tablet
This small, bun-shaped clay object is not a text in itself but a docket — a label that once sat on or in a basket of tablets, summarizing what the basket held. It records that the basket contained six individual tablets tallying donkeys (a šaganₓ-class of equid, along with their foals) that had been formally inspected and counted, belonging to the household administration of Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of the city-state of Lagash in southern Iraq. Baranamtara's household ('e-mi', the 'house of the woman/queen') is one of the best-documented economic archives from Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, around the 24th century BCE, giving us a rare window into how a royal wife's estate managed its livestock.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a filing label, not a letter or a story: it says the basket it was attached to held six tablets. Those tablets recorded donkeys — a particular class called šagan-donkeys, plus their foals — that had been inspected and officially counted. The animals belonged to the estate of Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, the ruler of Lagash. In short: 'six tablets on inspected donkeys and foals, property of Queen Baranamtara's household.'
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineBasket-of-tablets: donkeys, šaganₓ(AMA)-class, inspected (gurum₂) and counted (šid-da); donkey foals (dumu-dumu-ne), being present (e-da-gal₂, i.e. included in the count). (Archive of) Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler (ensi₂) of Lagaš. 6 (tablets).
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
pisan-dub ansze szaganx(AMA) gurum2-ma szid-da ansze dumu-dumu-ne e-da-gal2 bara2-nam-tar-ra dam lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz-ka 6(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 205. 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 (P221974) — 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.