Position in chronology
LAK p. 73, no. 1
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic administrative tablet from around 2600–2400 BCE, recording the distribution of a category of fine linen cloth (bar-gada) to a series of named personnel groups. The list runs through roughly fourteen entries — female couriers, female farmers, lady-mothers, bird officials, and several other groups whose titles are only partially legible — before closing with a grand total of approximately 38 units. Tablets of this type are the routine paperwork of Mesopotamian institutional households, most likely a temple or palace storeroom tracking who received what cloth from central stores. The variety of personnel titles, including several specifically female roles, offers a rare glimpse into the specialized labor hierarchy of an Early Dynastic institution.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a cloth-disbursement ledger. Fine-quality linen is going out to a series of named groups: 4 units to female couriers, 2 each to SUR workers, the GI-GI group, female farmers, and lady-mothers, and 5 units to the TU-AB personnel. A further eight or nine entries record smaller quantities for partially named recipients — an EN-bird official, brother-calves (?), small birds, a lion-[something] group — though several of those lines are too damaged to read in full. At the bottom a clerk tallied everything up: approximately 38 units of fine linen cloth distributed in total.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4? [units of] bar-gada cloth, fine-quality — female courier(s) 2 SUR 2 GI-GI 2 female farmer(s) 2 lady-mother(s) 5 TU-AB 2? [x] woman(?) [...] 1 EN-bird [x] 3? brother-calf [x] 3 DA-GE 3 small birds 1 [DUG×HI] — barley-barley [x] 3 ESZ16, lion-[x] 8? [x x] [x] Total: 38? [units of] bar-gada cloth x x
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
4(asz@c)#? bar gada du10-ge munus-kas4 2(asz@c)# sur 2(asz@c) gi-gi 2(asz@c) engar munus 2(asz@c) nin-ama 5(asz@c) tu-ab 2(asz@c)#? [x] munus# [...] 1(asz@c) EN@v muszen# [x] 3(asz@c)? szesz#-amar [x] 3(asz@c) da#-ge 3(asz@c) muszen-tur 1(asz@c) |DUGxHI| sze-sze [x] 3(asz@c) esz16 pirig-x 8(asz@c)#? x x [x] 3(u@c)# 8(asz@c)# bar gada x x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — LAK p. 73, no. 1. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: VAT 09091 (Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany) — from uncertain (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P250427). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.