Position in chronology
Nik 1, 297
About this tablet
This small clay tablet is a routine wool-account from the city of Girsu, part of the huge administrative archive kept by the Early Dynastic temple household of the goddess Bau. It records half a mana of white(-dyed) wool issued to a man named Geshgal-si, who held the office of 'gala' (a lamentation-priest, but also often an administrator of textile or ritual goods), for finishing work on a particular garment, and notes that the wool (or the finished item) was passed on to an official called the agazi. A running balance of '3' is entered against Geshgal-si's name at the end — the kind of bookkeeping notation that let temple scribes track who owed what in an economy without coined money.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a wool-ration voucher: half a mana of white(-dyed) wool was handed over to Geshgal-si, a gala-priest, to finish the outer part of a gu2-la2 garment. The finished work was then delivered to an official called the agazi. Geshgal-si's account is noted as carrying a balance of 3 (units unspecified — likely additional garments or wool-portions still owed or on hand).
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1/2(asz@c) mana of wool, white(-dyed) plant(-quality), (for) Geshgal-si, the gala (lamentation-priest), for the outer part of the gu2-la2 garment. It was returned/delivered to the agazi(-official), to be finished (made good). Geshgal-si holds (on balance): 3.
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
1/2(asz@c) ma-na siki u2 babbar2 geszgal-si gala-e bar tug2 gu2-la2-ka! aga3-zi-sze3 ba-gi4 sa6-sa6-da geszgal-si e-da-tuku 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 297. 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 (P222066) — 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.