Position in chronology
LB 0229
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Girsu (modern Tello), recording the transfer of eight goats from a man named Lu-dingira, with the transaction sealed and recorded by the scribe Lu-lagasz, son of Ur-Nanše. The year formula dates it to the year after Kimaš was destroyed — a real historical event from the reign of the Ur III king Šu-Sin, used here simply as a calendar reference. Tablets like this were part of the vast bureaucratic apparatus of the Ur III state, which tracked livestock, labor, and goods down to individual animals.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Eight goats were received from Lu-dingira. The scribe Lu-lagasz, son of Ur-Nanše (the overseer?), sealed the transaction and recorded it. The document is dated to the year following the destruction of Kimaš — a standard Ur III dating formula, not a description of an event happening on this tablet.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine8 goats, from Lu-dingira, sealed by Lu-lagasz. Year after: 'Kimaš was destroyed.' Lu-lagasz, scribe, son of Ur-Nanše, [the overseer?].
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
8(disz) masz2 ki lu2-dingir-ra-ta kiszib3 lu2-lagasz mu us2-sa ki-masz ba-hul lu2-lagasz dub-sar dumu ur-nansze [nu-banda3?]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — LB 0229. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: LB 0229 (de Liagre Böhl Collection, Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden, Holland) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P388763). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.