Position in chronology
DP 170
About this tablet
This is an Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Girsu (modern Tello), part of the large 'DP' archive of temple/household accounts published from the Louvre's collection. It tracks quantities of bread, beer-bread (bappir), malt, and finished beer — the raw materials and products of ancient Mesopotamian brewing — disbursed to a woman named Nin-e-muš and later consumed by a man named Amar-giri under the authority of a brewing official. Texts like this show how, nearly 4,500 years ago, a temple institution meticulously measured food and drink production using standardized capacity units (gur, ban2, sila).
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a brewery account from a temple household in ancient Girsu. It records a delivery to a woman named Nin-e-muš: a quantity of bread and fine beer, some hot bread, and the beer-bread and malt needed to brew a batch of sweet dark beer. A second, similar allotment of beer-bread, fine beer, and malt was used to brew beer at that same woman's place; the beer was then strained off and drunk by a man named Amar-giri, who worked under the brewer's supervision. The account closes with a tally of five units.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gur, 1 ban2, 3 sila bread — 'dub'-bread, sig-beer; 1 ban2, 3 sila bread — hot bread; 2 ban2 is its beer-bread (bappir); 3 ban2 is its malt — (for) sweet dark beer, for Nin-e-muš, the lady, the woman — it was brought to her. 3 ban2 beer-bread, sig-beer, 5 ban2 malt — its beer, at the woman's place, was strained/pressed, consumed by Amar-giri, the man of the brewer — 5.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(asz@c) 1(ban2@c) 3(disz@t) sila3 ninda dub kas sig15 1(ban2@c) 3(disz@t) sila3 ninda kum4-ma 2(ban2@c) bappir3-bi 3(ban2@c) munu4-bi kas ge6 du10-ga nin-e2-musz3-sze3 nin munus-ra ba-na-de6 3(ban2@c) bappir3 kas sig15 5(ban2@c) munu4 kas-bi ki munus-ka ba-sur gu7-a amar-giri16 lu2 lungax(|BIxNIG2|)-ka-kam 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 170. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220820) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.