Position in chronology
Nik 1, 217
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic (Presargonic) administrative tablet from Girsu, part of the famous archive of temple deliveries managed by the official Enigal, 'the overseer' (nu-banda), who is one of the best-attested administrators in the Baba temple household at Lagash around 2400 BCE. The text records a delivery or allotment made during the month of the festival of the goddess Baba, closed out and assigned to a herdsman named Ur-igi-ama who tended donkeys, with a final quantity of 5 units. Tablets like this one are the bookkeeping backbone of one of the earliest bureaucratic states known — thousands of nearly identical entries tracked grain, animals, and labor moving through a temple economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The record picks up mid-entry — something (the commodity is lost) was delivered to a named recipient. This happened in the month of the festival of Baba. Enigal, the overseer, closed out or finalized the transaction. It was then credited or allotted to Ur-igi-ama, the herdsman in charge of donkeys: a total of 5 (units, unspecified — likely animals or measures of goods). The tablet is a routine entry from a temple bookkeeping system, cataloguing who received what, when, and under whose administrative authority.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] was brought/delivered to him. Month: festival of Baba. Enigal, the overseer, set/completed the boundary (za3 bi2-šu4, i.e. closed out the account). For Ur-igi-ama, the herdsman of donkeys, it was allotted (ba-gar): 5.
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
mu-na-de6 iti ezem-[]ba-ba6-ka en-ig-gal nu-banda3 za3 bi2-szu4 ur-igi-ama-sze3 sipa szaganx(AMA)-ke4 ba-gar 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 217. 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 (P221986) — 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.