Position in chronology
StLouis 047
About this tablet
A small, badly damaged Early Dynastic account tablet from Girsu (modern Tello) in southern Iraq, roughly 2400 BCE. It records two small issues of barley — about 30 litres and 10 litres — to a handful of named people, including a fisherman's wife and a man called Amar-gu, each entry closing with the name of the maškim, the official responsible for seeing the transaction through. Documents like this are the routine bookkeeping of a temple or palace household, and their value lies in the ordinary names and job titles they preserve: fishermen, foremen, commissioners, and the households that lived off institutional grain.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Thirty litres of barley go to the fisherman's wife, together with Lu-dun-a, Amar-[…]-da and Ur-[…]; the commissioner in charge is named but his name is broken away. A second, smaller issue of ten litres of barley is entered as food provisions for Amar-gu; the entry notes that the overseer consumed it, and lists Šul-bi and, again, a commissioner whose name is lost. The tablet closes with a total of six units. Several names and one or two terms are damaged beyond recovery.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 ban₂ of barley — the wife of Il₂, the fisherman; Lu-dun-a, Amar-[…]-da, Ur-[…]; [its] commissioner (maškim). 1 ban₂ of barley — provisions (níg-gu₇-a): Amar-gu₄; its overseer (ugula) has consumed (it); Šul-bi; [its] commissioner (maškim). 6 (units).
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(ban2@c) sze dam il2 szu-ku6 lu2 dun-a amar-[x]-da#? ur-x-[x] maszkim-[bi] 1(ban2@c) sze nig2?-gu7?-a? amar-gu4 ugula-be2# i3-gu7 SZUL-bi2# maszkim#!-[bi] 6(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — StLouis 047. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Special Collections and Archives, John T. Richardson Library, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P274571) — 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.