Position in chronology
Nik 1, 260
About this tablet
This small cushion-shaped clay tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello) is a routine Early Dynastic administrative receipt, recording disbursements of oil and a dairy product (curds or soft cheese) to two named individuals, Lu-Nanše and Ur-tar, handled through an overseer named Ur-igi-ama at the house of a local surveyor. Such texts were part of the vast bookkeeping apparatus of the great temple households of Lagash, which tracked commodities down to the sila (about one liter) for rations, offerings, or institutional accounts. The month name given — the 'Festival of Barley-Eating' associated with the goddess Nanše — helps anchor this document within the local Lagash festival calendar of the mid-third millennium BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short account slip: 16 liters of oil were weighed out, along with roughly 2 gur (a standard large measure) plus 1 barig and 1 ban2 of curds or soft cheese, issued to a man named Lu-Nanše. A second, smaller portion — 2 liters of oil and 2 barig 1 ban2 of curds — went to a man named Ur-tar. Both transactions were handled through Ur-igi-ama, an overseer, and processed at the house of the local surveyor; the goods were entered into the two men's shared account. The record is dated to the month of the 'Barley-Eating Festival' of the goddess Nanše, and closes with a small tally mark reading '3.'
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine16 sila oil, weighed out (hung); 2 gur-saggal (standard gur) 1 barig 1 ban2 curd (cheese/ga'ar) — for Lu-Nanše. 2 sila oil, 2 barig 1 ban2 curd (cheese) — for Ur-tar, to Ur-igi-ama, the overseer (nubanda). In the house of the man of the measuring-rope (the surveyor), to their joint account it was placed. Month: 'Festival of Barley-Eating', of Nanše. 3.
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) 6(asz@c) sila3 i3 la2-a 2(asz@c) 1(barig@c) 1(ban2@c) ga'ar gur saggal lu2-nansze 2(asz@c) sila3 i3 2(barig@c) 1(ban2@c) ga'ar ur-tar ur-igi-ama-sze3 nu-banda3 e2 lu2 esz2-gid2-ka-ka gu2-ne-ne-a e-ne-gar iti ezem-sze-gu7 nansze-ka-ka 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 260. 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 (P222029) — 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.