Position in chronology
DP 209
About this tablet
This small pillow-shaped tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello) records a religious gift-offering of livestock — one ram and two goats — brought by a temple priest to Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler of the city-state of Lagash around 2400 BCE. It belongs to a large, well-known archive of hundreds of such household-economy tablets that tracked the flow of animals, grain, and goods through the palace and temple estates she administered. The animal-fattener Enku processed the final disbursement, and the transaction was dated by a local festival month rather than a numbered year — typical of Early Dynastic Sumerian bookkeeping before standardized calendars existed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One ram, one goat, and one young goat were brought in as a religious gift-offering by A-agrigzi, the priest of the goddess Ninmar. This took place during the month of the malt-eating festival of the god Ningirsu. Queen Baranamtara took delivery of the animals, and Enku, the livestock-fattener, handled their disbursement — noted here as the fourth such transaction on record.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ram, 1 goat, 1 young/thin goat — as mašdare-offering — (from) A-agrig-zi, the sanga-priest of (the goddess) Ninmar. Month: 'Festival of malt-eating of Ningirsu.' Baranamtara delivered (it) to her. Enku, the fattener — disbursed: 4th (entry/occurrence).
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-nita 1(asz@c) masz 1(asz@c) masz sig masz-da-re-a a-agrig-zi sanga nin-mar iti ezem munu4 gu7 nin-gir2-su-ka-ka bara2-nam-tar-ra mu-na-kux(DU) en-ku3 kuruszda-e ba-ra 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 209. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220859) — 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.