Position in chronology
Rochester 216
About this tablet
A small administrative receipt from Girsu (modern Tello, southern Iraq), written under the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2048 BCE. It records a barley disbursement — roughly 780 liters, measured by the official royal standard — issued as a food allowance, received from one official (Ur-sagku) and acknowledged under the seal of a foreman named Lu-dingira, with his supervisor Lu-Baba noted. The year-name commemorating the destruction of Kimaš, a city in the Zagros foothills, dates it precisely to the reign of King Shulgi, and the foreman's personal seal impression, naming his father, closes the document — the ancient equivalent of a signature on a warehouse chit.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt for 2 gur and 3 barig of barley (royal standard measure), issued as a food allowance for the territory of [name lost]. The grain came from Ur-sagku's account and was signed for, under seal, by the foreman Lu-dingira; his supervising officer was Lu-Baba. Dated to the harvest month, in the year King Shulgi's forces destroyed Kimaš. The seal rolled across the tablet reads: 'Lu-dingira, foreman, son of Ur-gigir,' followed by a partly lost institutional affiliation, the Enun-[...].
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 gur 3 barig of barley, royal measure, food allowance of the land of [...] ... ga-tug, from Ur-sagku; sealed tablet of Lu-dingira, the foreman. The overseer: Lu-Baba. Month: "Harvest" (še-sag-ku). Year: "Kimaš [was destroyed]." (Seal:) Lu-dingira, foreman, son of Ur-gigir, (of the) Enun-[...].
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(asz) 3(barig) sze gur lugal sza3-gal ma-da [...] ga-tug2 ki ur-sag-ku5-ta kiszib3 lu2-dingir-ra ugula nu-banda3 lu2-ba-ba6 iti sze-sag11-ku5 mu ki-masz[ ba-hul] lu2-dingir-ra ugula dumu ur-gigir e2-nun-[x]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Rochester 216. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: MAG 54.58.16 (Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P128320). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.