Position in chronology
Nik 1, 318
About this tablet
This small clay fragment from Girsu (ancient Tello), dated to the Early Dynastic period, is part of a legal or judicial record — likely a completed court case (a genre scholars call 'di-til-la'). The surviving lines list disbursements of bread and beer, name a scribe called Lugal-iri, and close with the standard formula naming the men who witnessed or were party to the matter, followed by a ritual act ('oil applied at the boundary') that formally sealed the proceeding. Such tablets are valuable because they show how early Mesopotamian institutions documented the resolution of disputes with formal witnesses and closing rites, alongside the everyday provisioning (bread, beer) that accompanied legal or administrative gatherings.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The beginning of the tablet is lost. What survives records a distribution of food: some loaves of bread associated with a man named Ur-gibil, then a total — six loaves handed over to someone, and three loaves for another man whose name is broken away. After another gap, the text lists one jug of thick beer and ten more loaves, credited to Lugal-iri, who acted as scribe. The document closes with a formal legal notice: these are the men who stood as witnesses or parties to the case, and the matter was sealed with a ritual application of oil 'at the boundary' — a customary way of formally concluding a legal proceeding in this period.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Break) [n] n ... (Break) [n] loaves (of) Ur-gibil Total: 6 loaves — delivered into his hand, 3 loaves — for the man PN-[...] (Break) ... ... 1 jug of thick beer, 10 loaves — Lugal-iri, the scribe. These are the men who are parties to the matter (witnesses); its oil was applied/performed at the boundary.
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
[...] [n] n x [...] [n(asz@c)] ninda ur-gibil6 a-nigin2 6(asz@c)# ninda# szu-a-ni#-sze3-DU 3(asz@c)# ninda# lu2#-[...] [...] x x 1(asz@c) kas dug gur4-gur4 1(u@c) ninda lugal-iri dub-sar lu2# ki inim-[ma-bi]-me# i3#!-bi# za3-ge be2-ak
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 318. 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 (P225780) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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