Position in chronology
Nik 1, 275
About this tablet
This is a small round clay 'basket tag' (pisan-dub) from Early Dynastic Girsu (modern Tello), one of thousands of administrative labels used to identify the contents of a container holding other, now-lost, tablets. Rather than a transaction in itself, it is a filing label summarizing categories of fish deliveries — fish carried in dusu-baskets, fish supplied monthly to the offering table, fish brought in by 'elders' fishermen,' fish caught with a particular net, and fish brought by fishermen working sweet-water (freshwater) grounds — all noted as being in the custody of one individual, with a final tally of 4. It offers a glimpse into the highly organized bureaucracy that tracked even something as modest as fish supply in a Sumerian city-state around 2400 BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a filing tag from a basket of records. It lists the kinds of fish being tracked: fish carried in dusu-baskets; fish delivered monthly for the offering table; fish brought in by the 'elders' fishing crew'; fish caught with the ZIZI net; and fish brought by fishermen who work the sweet-water grounds. All of it, the tag notes, is currently in the keeping of one person (A-du₁₀-ga), with a total count of 4 units recorded.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineBasket-of-tablets (label): Fish, dusu-basket (type); Fish for the table, monthly; Fish-deliverers of the elders; Fish of the ZIZI-net; Fish-deliverers of good/sweet water — it is in his (A-du₁₀-ga's) custody: 4 units.
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
pisan-dub ku6 dusu ku6 banszur-ra iti-da szu-ku6 ab-ba-ke4-ne ku6 sa |ZI&ZI|-a-ka szu-ku6 a du10-ga-ke4-ne e-da-gal2 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 275. 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 (P222044) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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