Position in chronology
DP 219
About this tablet
This is a pre-Sargonic (Early Dynastic IIIb) administrative tablet from Girsu, part of the large 'Documents Présargoniques' archive of the temple household of the goddess Baba, one of the earliest bureaucratic paper trails in history. It records a ram issued to a woman named Bara-irnun, wife of a garment-fuller, apparently as a provision tied to the birth of a child, prepared in the temple kitchen during a local religious festival. The entry is filed under 'sheep consumed,' credited to the account of Enku, the livestock fattener responsible for tracking the animals — a small line in the vast meat-and-grain bookkeeping that ran the great households of Sumer around 2400 BCE.
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 Bara-irnun, the wife of Alla the fuller, on the occasion of a newborn child in her household. This happened once the festival of Lugal-uru(11) had concluded, and the animal was dressed and prepared for her in the temple kitchen. The sheep is logged as 'consumed' — that is, slaughtered and used — and the entry is charged to Enku, the herdsman in charge of fattening the flock, whose tally now runs to four animals recorded this way.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 male sheep (ram) — Bara-irnun, wife of Alla, the fuller (garment-cleaner) — for the newborn child. When the festival of Lugal-uru(11)-ka was finished, in the kitchen it was prepared for her. Sheep consumed — Enku, is (the responsibility) of the fattener. Total: 4.
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 bara2-ir-nun dam al-la tug2-du8-a-ke4 dumu i3-tu-da-a iti ezem lugal-uru11-ka til-la-ba e2-muhaldim-ma ba-na-sa6 udu gu7-a en-ku3 kuruszda-kam 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 219. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220869) — 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.