Position in chronology
Nik 1, 279
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic (Presargonic) administrative tablet from Girsu, recording a shortfall — a deficit — of wool owed against the accounts of named workers. Nin-baradari, a female textile worker attached to a place or institution called Kigu, and an overseer named Šubur, are named as responsible parties, and the record notes that the account tablet documenting this deficit was formally transferred and the debt charged to someone's account. Tablets like this are the raw bookkeeping of a large temple or palace household economy, where wool — the great staple commodity of early Sumer — was tracked obsessively down to the last bundle. Its cushion shape and case-divided surface, visible in the photograph, is typical of Early Dynastic Girsu administrative tablets of this size.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record notes a wool shortfall: 62 bundles of wool are missing or still owed. The debt is charged against Nin-baradari, a female worker connected to a place called Kigu, and against Šubur, the overseer responsible for the account. The tablet recording this deficit was handed over (transferred) to settle or continue the matter, and the amount was formally entered against someone's account — a final figure of 5 is noted, though exactly what unit or sub-total this represents isn't fully clear from the text alone.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineDeficit: 1(gešʼ) 2(aš) [= 62] bundles of wool — (charged against) Nin-baradari, female worker of/at Kigu(ka), (and) Šubur, the overseer: the tablet was transferred (i.e., the account was passed on); it was set/charged upon his account (lit. "his neck") — 5.
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
la2-a 1(gesz2@c) 2(asz@c) sa gu nin-bara2-da-ri2 geme2 ki-gu-ka-da szubur nu-banda3 dub e-da-bala gu2-na e-ne2-gar 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 279. 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 (P222048) — 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.