DP 142

~2400 BCE·Early Dynastic·P220792

About this tablet

This is a small round administrative tablet from Girsu (modern Tello) in southern Iraq, dating to the mid-third millennium BCE — the Early Dynastic III period, when the city-state of Lagash was ruled by governors like Lugalanda and Urukagina. It records barley rations issued by the estate of the god Ningirsu, Lagash's chief deity, to a handful of named workers — including a group of porters or carriers — under the authority of a well-known temple official, En-iggal the overseer. Tablets like this one are the bookkeeping of a temple household economy: every measure of grain given out to staff was tallied, totaled, and checked against a count of recipients, the same bureaucratic instinct that runs through all Mesopotamian institutional archives.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

This tablet is a payroll slip from the temple estate of the god Ningirsu at Girsu. Three people are listed as receiving barley: Sag-Ningirsuda gets 2 gur and 2 ban2, Enku gets 1 gur 2 barig, and Lugal-sipa gets 1 gur 1 barig 1 ban2 — adding up to a total of just under 5 gur, all in a standard grain measure. The month name is lost. The disbursement was authorized by En-iggal, the estate's overseer, who handed out grain to a group of four porters, with the count double-checked ('it is four'). A further single gur went to a man named Idlu-sikil, son of Ur-Ninmar, who is identified as working under an official called Inimanizi.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

2 gur (of the gur-saggal measure), 2 ban2: barley rations, NE-GI-bar barley, gur-saggal measure — (for) Sag-Ningirsuda; 1 gur, 2 barig: Enku; 1 gur, 1 barig, 1 ban2: Lugal-sipa. Total: 5 gur less 3 ban2, NE-GI-bar barley, gur-saggal measure. Month: [...]. Of (the estate/house of) Ningirsu: En-iggal, the overseer, to the porters (íl-workers) disbursed (it). 4 (units/persons) — it is (confirmed as) 4. 1 gur: I(d)-lu-sikil, son of Ur-Ninmar, man of Inimanizi.

Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

Transliteration

2(asz@c) 2(ban2) sze-ba sze NE-GI-bar gur saggal
sag-nin-gir2-su-da
1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) en-ku3
1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) 1(ban2@c) lugal-sipa
szu-nigin2 5(asz@c) la2 3(ban2@c) sze [NE]-GI-[bar] gur [saggal]
iti [...]
nin-[gir2-su]-ka-ka
en-ig-gal
nu-banda3
il2-ne
e-ne-ba 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
4(disz@t) ba-am6
1(asz@c) i7-lu2-sikil
dumu ur-nin-mar
lu2 inim-ma-ni-zi

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 142. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220792) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).

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