Position in chronology
Nik 1, 238
About this tablet
This small cushion-shaped tablet from Girsu (ancient Lagash) is a short administrative memo from around 2400 BCE, part of the well-known 'Nik' (Nikolski) archive now in the Hermitage. It records four goat hides delivered by a herdsman named Ur-Baba at a threshing floor in a field called Ugiga, processed under En-iggal, a senior administrative overseer (nu-banda3) frequently attested in the Lagash palace records of this period overseeing requisitioned goods. Texts like this one are the everyday bookkeeping of a temple/palace household economy — tracking livestock products as they moved from herders into institutional storage.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Four hides from large male goats were handed over by Ur-Baba, the goat-herder, at the threshing floor belonging to the field known as Ugiga; the hides were formally returned or handed off to the responsible official. The overseer En-iggal recorded the transaction as a requisitioned item, inspected and approved, with a tally of two noted at the end. It's a brief institutional receipt — a herder delivering animal products, and an official signing off on the count.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 hides of large billy-goats — Ur-Baba, the goat-herdsman — (at) the threshing floor of the field of Ugiga — were returned/restored into (the official's) hand. En-iggal, the overseer: seized/requisitioned goods (nam-dab5-ba), inspected and approved: 2.
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 masz gal-gal ur-ba-ba6 sipa masz-ke4 ki-su7 GAN2 u3-gig-ga-ka szu-a bi2-gi4 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 nam-da-ba igi be2-sag5 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 238. 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 (P222007) — 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.