Position in chronology
CST 001
About this tablet
A small clay tablet from Girsu (modern Tello, southern Iraq), written around 2400 BCE in the Presargonic period. It is a flock inventory: a scribe counts 82 head — mother ewes, rams, and two grades of male and female lambs — and states that the animals belong personally to a man named Enda-nirgal rather than to the temple estate. An overseer named Šubur handled the plucking of the wool at a building called the House of the Street, and the flock was then quartered with a herdsman, Lugal-ikuš, in year 1 of a ruler's reign. Documents like this are the earliest surviving accounting of private livestock wealth in the wool economy that made Lagash rich.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Flock count: 33 breeding ewes, 29 rams, 8 ewe lambs and 5 ram lambs of the nim grade, 4 ewe lambs and 3 ram lambs of the e-li grade — 82 head in all, ewes and their lambs together. These sheep are the personal property of Enda-nirgal. Šubur the overseer had the wool plucked at the House of the Street, and the animals were then placed in the care of Lugal-ikuš. Year 1.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine33 mother-ewes; 29 (lit. 30 less 1) rams; 8 female lambs, nim-lambs; 5 male lambs, nim-lambs; 4 female lambs, e-li-lambs; 3 male lambs, e-li-lambs. Total: 82 ewes together with their lambs. The sheep are the private property of Enda-nirgal. Šubur, the overseer, in the House of the Street plucked (them). With Lugal-ikuš they were kept. (Year) 1.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
3(u@c) 3(asz@c) u8-ama 3(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) udu-nita 8(asz@c) MUNUS-U8 sila4 nim 5(asz@c) sila4 nita sila4 nim 4(asz@c) MUNUS-U8 e3-li 3(asz@c) sila4 nita e3-li szu-nigin2 1(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 2(asz@c) u8 sila4-bi-ta udu u2-rum en-da-nir-gal2-kam szubur nu-banda3 e2 e-sir2-ra-ka e-ur4 lugal-i3-kusz2 e-da-se12 1(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CST 001. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK (P221751) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.