Position in chronology
Nik 1, 241
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello) in southern Iraq, recording deliveries of animal hides — plain hides for tanning, a special hide-type called a-gar-ka, and the skins of nanny-goats, large billy-goats, and prime kid-goats — issued in a month called 'Inspection.' The transaction runs through an overseer named Ur-igi-ama and is handed off to a leatherworker, Ur-Ninpirig, who presumably turned the raw hides into finished leather goods for the temple household. Texts like this belonged to the large administrative archive of the Bau/Ba'u temple at Girsu, and they let us reconstruct, item by item, how a Sumerian temple economy tracked animal by-products from herd to workshop nearly 4,500 years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a hide-inventory receipt. It logs 15 hides set aside for tanning, 58 hides of a particular grade called 'a-gar-ka,' 75 hides taken from nanny-goats and large billy-goats, and 26 hides from prime young kid-goats. The transaction is dated to the month called 'Inspection.' It was handled through an official named Ur-igi-ama, described as overseer, and the hides were ultimately delivered to a leatherworker named Ur-Ninpirig, who counted or received the goods — though the exact final quantity is now broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine15 hides, hides for du8 (stretching/tanning) — for/of LAK470-ra; 58 hides of a-gar-ka (a hide-type/quality); 75 hides of nanny-goats (and) hides of large billy-goats; 26 hides of fine ("sweet-heart") kid-goats. Month: "Inspection" (iti gurum2-ma-ka). To Ur-igi-ama, the overseer (nu-banda3); [Ur]-Ninpirig, the leatherworker (aszgab) — he counted/delivered [...] to him.
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
1(u@c) 5(asz@c) kusz kusz du8-sze3 LAK470-ra2 1(gesz2@c) la2 2(asz@c) kusz a-gar-ka 1(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) kusz ud5 kusz masz gal-gal 2(u@c) 6(asz@c) kusz masz sza3-du10 iti gurum2-ma-ka ur-igi-ama-sze3 nu-banda3 [ur]-nin-pirig aszgab-ra e-[na]-szid [x]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 241. 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 (P222010) — 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.