Position in chronology
RTC 045
About this tablet
A livestock memorandum from the temple-household administration of Girsu (modern Tello) in southern Iraq, written in the last generations of the Early Dynastic period, around 2350 BCE. It counts a small flock — three ewes, seven females and twelve male lambs — that came out of a named holding, notes that the chief inspector En-iggal set them aside at the time the grown sheep were plucked for wool, and that the herd master Ur-du took them back under his own responsibility. The last two lines are the interesting part: the scribe records that this transaction was deliberately NOT written into the main ledger (the 'broad tablet') and that the shortfall was not written off — a rare glimpse of Sumerian accountants flagging an irregularity in their own books.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Three ewes, seven females and twelve male lambs, all coming out of the Lul-gu holding — lambs, all of them. At the season when the mature sheep were plucked for wool, the inspector En-iggal held these animals back, and the head herdsman Ur-du took them back into his own keeping. Note: this transfer was never posted to the main ledger, and the outstanding shortfall was not written off. Year 3.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 ewes, 7 female sheep — issued(?), 12 male lambs — issued(?), which came out from Lul-gu; they are lambs. At the plucking of the full-grown sheep, En-iggal, the overseer, set (them) aside. Ur-du, the chief herdsman, returned (them) into his own hand (i.e. took them back into his charge). It was not entered on the broad tablet; the deficit was not deducted from it. 3rd (year).
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
3(asz@c) u8 7(asz@c) MUNUS-U8 e3-li 1(u@c) 2(asz@c) sila4 nita e3:li lul-gu e3-a sila4-kam zu2-si udu gal-gal-ka en-ig-gal nu-banda3 za3 bi2-szu4 ur-du6 szusz3 szu-na i3-ni-gi4 dub dagal-a nu-gar la2-a nu-ta-zi 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — RTC 045. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221442) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.