Position in chronology
Nik 1, 231
About this tablet
This is a very short Early Dynastic (Presargonic) administrative memorandum from Girsu, part of the household/temple economy that produced the Nikolski I (Nik 1) archive. It records two small disbursements — sheep hides handed over to an overseer named Ur-igi-ama, and a modest amount of silver directed toward a brewer named Lugal-menx — dated by a local month name tied to a periodic sheep inspection. Tablets like this are the humble bookkeeping backbone of the Lagash state economy around the mid-third millennium BCE: goods and small payments tracked, official by official, month by month.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This memo records two small handouts from the administration. First, four sheep hides go to Ur-igi-ama, the overseer. Second, about one and a half shekels of silver are set aside — the purpose is broken away — for Lugal-menx, the brewer. Both transactions are dated to the month called "Inspection of Sheep." The record closes by noting that someone (an unnamed official) handed the goods over, with a final tally of four.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 sheep-hides — for Ur-igi-ama, the overseer. 1 1/2 (shekels?) silver — for [......], for Lugal-menx, the brewer. Month: "Inspection-of-sheep." He gave to him: 4 [units].
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
4(asz@c) kusz udu ur-igi-ama-sze3 nu-banda3 1(asz@c) 1/2(disz)? ku3 [...]-sze3 lugal-menx(|GA2xEN|) lu2 lungax(|BIxNIG2|)-ra iti gurum2-udu-ka-ka e-na-szum2 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 231. 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 (P222000) — 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.