Position in chronology
TSU 091
About this tablet
A small receipt from the city of Girsu in southern Iraq, written around 2050 BCE under the Ur III dynasty's famously meticulous bureaucracy. It records oil and about four liters of honey or date syrup, drawn from a merchant named Ur-Egal, to supply festival offerings at the two great temples of the city — that of the warrior god Ningirsu and of his consort, the goddess Baba. A scribe signs off at the end, showing how even the sweeteners for a religious feast passed through formal accounting.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a supply voucher for a temple festival. An unknown quantity (the first line is broken) of oil was issued as rations for the gods, along with 4 sila — roughly four liters — of honey or date syrup for the festival, destined for the temple of Ningirsu and the temple of Baba. The goods were taken from the stock of Ur-Egal, the merchant. The document was drawn up by the scribe Lugal-GIR-gal, son of Lu-Baba. The opening line with the oil quantity is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] (quantity lost) oil rations for the gods; 4 sila of syrup (lal) for the festival — (for) the temple of Ningirsu and the temple of Baba — received from Ur-Egal, the mer[chant]. Lugal-GIR-gal, the scri[be], son of Lu-Ba[ba?].
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
x [...] i3-ba dingir-re-ne-sze3 4(disz) sila3 lal3 ezem-ka e2 nin-gir2-su-ka# u3 e2 ba-ba6 ki ur-e2-gal dam-[gar3-ta] lugal-GIR2@g?-gal dub-[sar] dumu lu2-ba?-[ba6?]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — TSU 091. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: MRAH O.0517 (Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P135241). 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.