Position in chronology
LB 0237
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Girsu (ancient Tello), part of the archive of the temple of the goddess Baba. It records that something — likely rations, animals, or goods, now lost in the break — was received from an official named Inim-Baba, and lists several named individuals, including a priestess of Baba and a donkey-herder, who were involved as recipients or witnesses. The year name, 'Anšan was destroyed,' dates the tablet to the 34th regnal year of King Shulgi (c. 21st century BCE), tying this humble bookkeeping entry to a known royal military campaign.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A person named Ur-sag(-...) formally received some goods or property. Another entry mentions someone connected to the name Baba, and a partly broken line follows that cannot be read. The transaction is recorded as having been taken in charge from an official called Inim-Baba. It is dated to the month called 'Mušudu,' in the year King Shulgi's forces destroyed the city of Anšan. The record then lists several more people tied to the transaction: a woman named Geme-Lamma, a priestess of the goddess Baba, a man named Ur-sag(-ub3), and a donkey-herder named Warad-zu. Essentially, this is a routine receipt or distribution record from a temple archive, naming who got what, who it came from, and exactly when.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineUr-sag?-[...], received (it) (šu ba-ti). [...]-Baba ... GA-UR(?) [...] from Inim-Baba, having been taken in charge (ki Inim-Baba-i3-dab5-ta) — month: "Mušudu," year: "Anšan was destroyed" (mu An-šan ba-hul). Geme-Lamma, ereš-dingir priestess of Baba, Ur-sag-[ub3], shepherd of donkeys, Warad-zu (ARAD2-[zu]).
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
ur-sag?-[...] szu ba-ti#? [... ]ba-ba6 x [...] GA-UR? ki# inim-ba-ba6-i3-dab5-ta iti mu-szu-du8 mu an-sza-an ba-hul geme2-lamma eresz-dingir ba-ba6 ur-sag-[ub3] sipa ansze ARAD2-[zu]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — LB 0237. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šulgi y35 — Anšan destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: LB 0237 (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, P388771). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.