Position in chronology
Nik 1, 225
About this tablet
This is a small cushion-shaped administrative tablet from Girsu (ancient Lagash), dating to the Early Dynastic IIIb period, roughly the 24th century BCE. It records a delivery of animal hides — from sheep, lambs, and a kid — handed over by temple cooks attached to a building called the 'New House,' during the month of the barley-eating festival of the goddess Nanše. An overseer returns the goods to another official, Šulbi, who receives them for deposit in a field — a glimpse into the meticulous bookkeeping of raw materials (leather, likely destined for waterskins, containers, or tools) inside a Sumerian temple economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a receipt for hides: four sheep hides, three lamb hides, and one kid hide (the standard/regular delivery), handed over by the temple cooks of the 'New House.' The transaction is dated to the month of the barley-eating festival of the goddess Nanše. The overseer returns the goods into someone's custody, apparently so they can be deposited out in the field; a man named Šulbi is recorded as the one who takes receipt of them. It's a routine bookkeeping entry tracking raw hides moving between temple departments.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 hides of sheep, 3 hides of lambs, 1 hide of a kid — the regular (delivery), from the cook(s) of the New House; month: "Festival of Barley-Eating," (festival) of Nanše; the overseer returned (it) into his hand; in the field, [to be placed/deposited], [Šulbi] [received].
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
4(asz@c) kusz udu 3(asz@c) kusz sila4 1(asz@c) kusz masz sza3-du10 e-ta muhaldim e2 gibil-a iti ezem-sze-gu7 nansze-ka nu-banda3 szu-na i3-ni-gi4 a-gar-ka [ga2-ga2-de3] [SZUL-bi2] [szu ba-ti]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 225. 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 (P221994) — 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.