Position in chronology
DP 204
About this tablet
This is a food-offering account from the household archive of Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of the city-state of Lagash (in what is now southern Iraq), dated to around 2400 BCE. It records specific quantities of bread, cakes, and dairy products earmarked for the gods Nanše and Nindara, part of the elaborate temple-provisioning system that queens of Lagash personally administered. Hundreds of tablets like this one survive from Baranamtara's office, making her one of the best-documented women of the ancient world.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet tallies food set aside for two gods. For the goddess Nanše: ten loaves of fine bread, thirty small cakes, one measure of milk, and twenty-five portions of a dairy product called mud-ga. For the god Nindara: twenty cakes, one measure of milk, and an unspecified amount of the same dairy product (the number is broken away). Also delivered was a special bread made with pure milk. Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of Lagash, had all of this brought in — recorded here as entry number two.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 ninda-bread (loaves) of fine flour, 30 sur-cakes, 1 nig2-banda3-measure of milk, 25 (units) of mud-ga (dairy product) — for Nanše; 20 sur-cakes, 1 nig2-banda3-measure of milk, [x] mud-ga — for Nindara; pure milk-bread — Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler (ensi2) of Lagash, had delivered to her. 2.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(u@c) ninda zi3 gu sig15 3(u@c) sur 1(asz@c) nig2-banda3 ga 2(u@c) 5(asz@c) mudx(LAK449) ga nansze 2(u@c) sur 1(asz@c) nig2-banda3 ga [x] mudx(LAK449) ga nin-dar ninda ga ku3-ga bara2-nam-tar-ra dam lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz-ka-ra mu-na-kux(DU) 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 204. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220854) — 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.