Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/3, pl. 224, Bod S 189
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Girsu (ancient Tello), one of thousands of such sealed dockets that tracked grain moving through the temple and palace economy around 2100–2000 BCE. A scribe named Bidu'i-sa — identified by his personal seal as son of Ka-ku and cupbearer of the goddess Baba, patron deity of the Lagash state — formally received a quantity of dabin-flour from an official named Igi-saga. Tablets like this were the everyday bookkeeping of a highly bureaucratized state, recording who handed over what to whom and under whose sealed authority.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a receipt: Bidu'i-sa's seal is affixed, confirming that he took delivery of 3 gur and 3 barig of dabin-flour (a coarse-ground grain product), which came from Igi-saga. The document identifies Bidu'i-sa as a scribe, son of Ka-ku, and notes that he held the office of cupbearer to the goddess Baba — details recorded as part of his official seal legend rather than as narrative text.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineSeal of Bidu'i-sa; he received (it). 3 gur 3 barig dabin-flour, from Igi-saga, (seal of) Bidu'i-sa, the scribe, son of Ka-ku, cupbearer of Baba.
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
kiszib3 bi2-du11-i3-sa6 szu ba-ti 3(asz) 3(barig) zi3 dabin gur ki igi-sa6-ga-ta bi2-du11-i3-sa6 dub-sar dumu ka-ku3 sagi ba-ba6
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAICAB 1/3, pl. 224, Bod S 189. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Bod S 189 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P249093). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.