Position in chronology
Nik 1, 295
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic (Presargonic) economic tablet from Girsu, part of the administrative archive tied to the household of the ruler Lugalanda of Lagash, roughly 24th century BCE. It records a modest disbursement of silver — a third of a shekel plus three grains — handled through a merchant named Adda and paid out to an official called Ur-igi-ama, who held the rank of 'overseer' (nu-banda3). Silver disbursement records like this one are common in the Girsu corpus and give a glimpse of how precious metal moved through merchants and officials in a temple-palace economy, dated here by the fifth year of Lugalanda's rule.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A small amount of silver — one third of a shekel plus three grains — was weighed out and paid over. The transaction involved Adda the merchant and was directed to Dingir-kalga, then to Ur-igi-ama, an overseer, to whom the silver was formally weighed out. The record is dated to year 5 of the reign of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash — essentially a brief receipt logging a small silver payment through the local administration.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1/3 shekel (and) 3 grains of silver, weighed-out (bar-dub2-ba) silver: Adda, the merchant, to Dingir-kalga, to Ur-igi-ama, the overseer (nu-banda3) — it was weighed out to him. Lugalanda, ruler (ensi2) of Lagash. Year 5.
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
1/3(asz@c) gin2 3(asz@c) ku3 bar-dub2-ba ad-da dam-gar3 dingir-kal-ga-ka-ra ur-igi-ama-sze3 nu-banda3 e-na-la2 lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 295. 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 (P222064) — 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.