Position in chronology
Nik 1, 177
About this tablet
This is a small, rounded 'pillow-shaped' clay tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello), dating to the Early Dynastic period, around the mid-third millennium BCE — one of the compact administrative or check-tablets used by the temple bureaucracy of Lagash to tally livestock holdings. It records a herd count: hundreds of ewes reckoned apart from their lambs, dozens of oxen reckoned apart from cows, and a smaller number of donkeys, followed by a running total, two named individuals, and a note involving a scribe who apparently reviewed or reissued the reckoning. Tablets of this exact round, cushion-like shape are typical of short-form livestock accounts or verification memos from the Lagash state economy, distinct from the larger flat tablets used for longer administrative archives.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet tallies livestock: 660 ewes, not counting their lambs; 24 oxen, not counting the cows; and 16 donkeys. The scribe adds these up and gives a total. Two people are named — Na-e-a and Lugal-mu — apparently connected to the count 'by his word,' meaning the figures rest on someone's spoken authorization or report. A scribe is noted as having reviewed, repeated, or reissued the record — essentially double-checking or re-copying the tally. The tablet closes with a short, hard-to-parse notation and what looks like a sealed or marked total of 4, likely some kind of verification mark whose exact meaning is now lost to us.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine660 ewes — excluding the lambs; 24 oxen — excluding the cows; 16 donkeys. Its total (gu2-bi). Na-e-a, Lugal-mu, by his word/statement (du11-ga-na). The scribe repeated (verified/reissued) (it) (mu-gi4-a). ba-ra (obscure). Sealed: 4 (he2-su 4).
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(gesz'u@c) 1(gesz2@c) u8 sila4-bi-ta 2(u@c) 4(asz@c) gu4 ab2-ta 1(u@c) 6(asz@c) ansze gu2-bi na-e-a lugal-mu du11-ga-na dub-sar mu-gi4-a ba-ra he2-su 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 177. 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 (P221946) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.
Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.