Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 064
About this tablet
A tiny pierced clay tag from Adab (modern Bismaya) in southern Iraq, made around 2400 BCE and meant to be strung to a basket or jar-stand as a delivery label. It records the food issued for two visiting heads of state — the rulers of Umma and of Lagaš — 180 loaves of bread and a batch of beer jars, drawn from the estate of a gudu-priest during the barley-harvest month. Small as it is, it is a snapshot of inter-city diplomacy: Umma and Lagaš were famous rivals, and here officials at a third city are feeding both their leaders at once, at the busiest moment of the agricultural year.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Provisions issued: 180 loaves of bread and a lot of beer jars — ten less a few, the exact shortfall broken away. They go to the governor of Umma and the governor of Lagaš, charged to the household of the gudu-priest. Dated to the month of the barley harvest. The reverse of the tag carries no ancient writing, only a modern collection number in ink.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine180 loaves of bread; 10 minus [n] jars (of beer); (for) the ruler (ensi) of Gišša (Umma), (and) the ruler (ensi) of Lagaš; (from) the household of the gudu-priest. It is the month of the barley harvest.
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(gesz2@c)# ninda 1(u@c) la2# [n] dug# ensi2 geszax(|UH3xKASKAL|) ensi lagaszx(|BUR.SZIR.LA.MUSZEN|) e2 gudux(AH) iti sze-gurx(|SZE&SZE.KIN|)-a-am6
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 064. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P250869) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.