RTC 003

About this tablet

A heavily damaged administrative tablet from Girsu (southern Iraq), dating to the Early Dynastic period — roughly 2600–2350 BCE. The surviving entries record quantities of persons or goods assigned to named categories of temple personnel: a herald, women of the lord, a lady, and at least one named building called the 'House of Shadow.' Girsu was the cult center of the god Ningirsu and one of the most intensively documented cities of early Sumer; tablets like this formed the backbone of its temple economy. Though too broken to reconstruct a single coherent transaction, the text gives a glimpse of the hierarchical workforce attached to the city's great institutional households.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

The tablet opens with several broken or illegible lines. What survives records: 2 units linked to a 'ne-[...]' category; an unclear number associated with 'a-en-da' (something connected to the lord); 4 units assigned to the House of Shadow; 10 women of the lord; 4 units of USZ [category lost]; and 20 units connected to a lady whose name or title is partially destroyed. The final line is too damaged to read.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

[...] ... [n] zi#-zu-[...] [n] herald(-na-me-ub-[...]) 2 ne-[...] [...] [n] a-en-da 4 — House of Shadow (é-gissu) 10 women of the lord 4 USZ [...] 20 [x]-nin-[x] [...]

Lecture indicative — traduit sans photographie. Générée à partir de la translittération seule, sans examen de l'original. À lire comme une mise en bouche accessible, non comme une entrée de catalogue vérifiée.

Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

Transliteration

[...] x
[n] zi#-zu-x
[n] nimgir#-na-me-ub-x
2(asz@c) ne-x [...]
[n] a-en-da
4(asz@c) e2-gissu
1(u@c) munus-en-da
4(asz@c) USZ [...]
2(u@c) [(x)]-nin-[x]
x-[x]-x

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — RTC 003. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: AO 00412 (Louvre Museum, Paris, France) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P010557). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).

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