Position in chronology
DP 147
About this tablet
This is a small cushion-shaped administrative tablet from Girsu (modern Tello) in southern Iraq, dating to the Early Dynastic IIIb period, roughly the 24th century BCE — among the oldest bureaucratic paperwork ever recovered. It records regular institutional deliveries ('sa2-du11') of emmer wheat and dark beer, tracked over one or two months, involving named brewers and overseen by a palace or temple steward named Enshugigi. Texts like this one, part of the 'Documents Présargoniques' corpus from the temple archives of the goddess Baba at Girsu, show the earliest known systems of rationed food and drink allocation administered by a professional bureaucracy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record logs a shipment of grain and beer handled by temple officials. Twenty-two and a fraction sacks (using the standard 'gur-saggal' measure) of white emmer wheat were delivered as a regular monthly allotment, credited to a man named Amar-giri. Separately, twenty sacks of emmer went out as the month's regular ration of dark beer, and this batch was recorded as deposited in its designated spot. The brewer Ili-beli and his colleagues handled the beer-making side of things, while the steward Enshugigi issued the goods from a granary nicknamed 'Before My True Eye' — essentially a name meaning 'in plain sight' or 'well-watched.' The tablet closes with a short tally: six items issued, three set aside — bookkeeping shorthand whose exact meaning is now hard to recover.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine22 gur 2 barig of white emmer, by the gur-saggal (standard) measure — regular delivery, month 2. (Account of) Amar-giri16. 20 (gur) emmer, regular delivery of black beer, for month 1, was set in its place. Ili-beli, (they are) the brewers. Enshugigi, the steward — from the storehouse 'Before-my-true-eye' (Igizimušebar), he set out for them: 6, 3 were set.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(u@c) 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) ziz2 babbar2 gur saggal sa2-du11 iti 2(disz@t)-kam amar-giri16 2(u@c) ziz2 sa2-du11 kas ge6 iti 1(disz@t)-a-ka ki-ba gar-ra-am6 i3-li2-be6-li2 lu2 lungax(|BIxNIG2|)-me en-szu-gi4-gi4 agrig-ge ganun igi-zi-mu-sze3-bar-ta e-ne-ta-gar 6(|ASZxDISZ@t|) 3(disz@t) gar-am6
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 147. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220797) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.