Position in chronology
DP 201
About this tablet
This is a small palm-sized clay account tablet from the city of Girsu (modern Tello) in southern Iraq, dating to roughly 2400 BCE. It records the disbursement of a single ram — a routine entry from the household administration of Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash, whose archive of thousands of such tablets is one of the richest sources for daily economic life in early Sumer. The animal was issued for a man named Mesandu after a barley-related festival dedicated to the goddess Nanše, with the herdsman-official Enku responsible for the livestock. Tablets like this, produced by the dozen by palace scribes, let historians reconstruct the rhythms of temple festivals, rationing, and bureaucratic oversight nearly 4,400 years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One ram was handed over to a man named Mesandu, charged to the household of Baranamtara. This happened after the 'barley-eating' festival held for the goddess Nanše — the animal was marked (branded or tallied) at intake and then consumed as part of the disbursement. Enku, the livestock fattener in charge of the herd, is named as responsible for it. The tablet closes with the number five, likely a running or summary count tied to this and related entries.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ram — for Mesandu. (From) Baranamtara. After the festival 'barley-eating' of Nanše, it was branded (tallied), consumed. Enku is the fattener. 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) udu mes-an-du-sze3 bara2-nam-tar-ra egir4 ezem sze gu7 nansze-ka-ta gesz be2-tag gu7-a en-ku3 kuruszda-kam 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 201. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220851) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (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.