Position in chronology
Nik 1, 271
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello), recording a delivery of several kinds of fish — some fresh, some split and presumably dried — first offered as 'first-fruits' and then delivered to the palace after a barley-eating festival. The overseer Šubur is named as the official responsible for the delivery from the temple estate of the god Ningirsu to the palace, with a closing note that an outstanding balance remained uncollected. Such texts are part of the vast Presargonic Lagash fish-and-offering archive, which shows how temple and palace economies tracked even small quantities of fish as accountable goods tied to festival calendars.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record tallies a fish delivery: 3 gu2-gur10 fish, 60 gir fish, and 120 HI fish set aside as a first-fruits offering, plus 40 split suhur (carp) fish and 40 split a-dar-tun2 fish, associated with a man named Šubur. After the barley-eating festival, these fish were brought from the estate of the god Ningirsu. Šubur, the overseer, then delivered them on to the palace — one lot recorded — but the account notes that their outstanding balance was still not cleared.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 gu2-gur10 fish, 60 gir fish, 120 HI fish — (as) first-fruits offering. 40 suhur (carp) fish, split, 40 a-dar-tun2 fish, split — (for/of) Šubur. After the barley-eating festival, from (the estate of) Ningirsu, was brought. Šubur, the overseer, to the palace delivered: 1 (unit). Their outstanding balance was not removed.
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
3(asz@c) gu2 gur10 1(gesz2@c) gir 2(gesz2@c) HI ne-sag 4(u@c) suhur dar-ra 4(u@c) a-dar-tun2 dar-ra szubur egir4 ezem sze gu7 nin-gir2-su-ka-ta mu-de6 szubur nu-banda3 e2-gal-la i3-kux(DU) 1(|ASZxDISZ@t|) la2-a-ne-ne nu-ta-zi
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 271. 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 (P222040) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.