Position in chronology
DP 202
About this tablet
This is a small clay administrative chit from Girsu (modern Tello) in southern Iraq, dating to the Early Dynastic IIIb period, roughly the 24th century BCE — part of the archive later published as 'Documents Présargoniques.' It records a modest delivery of livestock (a sheep and a goat) along with beer and bread from a temple threshing floor to the household of the city ruler (the ensi2), with responsibility assigned to an official called the 'fattener,' apparently named En-ku. Tablets like this were the receipts of a highly organized redistributive economy, in which temple and palace households tracked every animal and ration passing through their hands.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One sheep and one goat, plus beer and bread from the threshing-floor stores, were delivered to the ruler's household. The sheep was issued as a ration. The person accountable for this — En-ku, who holds the office of livestock fattener — is named as responsible. (A final numeral, likely a tally or filing mark, closes the entry.)
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sheep, 1 goat, beer (and) bread, together with (from) the threshing floor, to the place of the ruler (ensi2) were brought. Sheep for consumption (ration) — En-ku, is (responsible as) the fattener. 5 (tally/seal notation).
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 1(asz@c) masz kas ninda ki-su7-ga-da ki ensi2-ka-sze3 e-da-de6 udu gu7-a en-ku3 kuruszda-kam 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 202. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220852) — 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.