Position in chronology
DP 039
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic III grain account from the city of Lagaš in southern Iraq, written around 2400–2350 BCE. It tallies four types of cereal — barley, white emmer, a coarse grain called gu2-nida, and a wheat — drawn from a named agricultural field called the 'ki-ti field,' which served as the official subsistence holding of En-e-tar-zi, the governor of Lagaš, a real historical figure attested across many tablets of this archive. The scribe rigorously checks his own arithmetic: the four commodity subtotals add to exactly 609 large-capacity measures, which the grand-total line confirms. A transfer agent named Ur-šer7-da is named as the official responsible for handing over the goods, and the document closes with a term or year number.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The account covers four types of grain: 353 large measures of barley, 193 of white emmer wheat, 53 of a coarse grain, and 10 of another wheat — 609 measures in total. All of this came from the 'ki-ti field,' which was the official land allotment of En-e-tar-zi, the governor of Lagaš. At that field, trees were also felled. An official named Ur-šer7-da carried out the formal transfer to him. The document is dated to year — or term — four.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine353 gur-saggal of barley; 193 [gur-saggal] of white emmer wheat; 53 [gur-saggal] of gu2-nida grain; 10 [gur-saggal] of gig wheat. Grand total: 609 gur-saggal. Field ki-ti — subsistence allotment of En-e-tar-zi, governor of Lagaš. At ki-ti, trees were felled. Ur-šer7-da transferred [it] to him. [Year/term] 4.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
6(gesz2@c) la2 7(asz@c) sze gur saggal 3(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 3(asz@c) ziz2 babbar2 5(u@c) 3(asz@c) gu2-nida 1(u@c) gig szu-nigin2 1(gesz'u@c) 1(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) gur saggal GAN2 ki-ti szuku en-e-tar-zi ensi2 lagasz-ka ki-ti gesz be2-ra ur-szer7-da mu-na-bala 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 039. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220689) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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.