Position in chronology
DP 260
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from the palace archive of Lagash, one of many recording livestock handled on behalf of Sasa, wife of the reforming king Urukagina (also read Uru-inimgina), who ruled around 2350 BCE. A shepherd named En-DU brings in a single wool-bearing sheep during the month associated with wool distribution, and the transaction is logged as completed 'in the palace, into her hand.' Tablets like this one are part of a large administrative archive documenting the queen's household economy — flocks, wool, rations — and are among the earliest detailed records of a royal woman's independent economic establishment in Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One wool-sheep was brought in this month — the month set aside for distributing wool. The shepherd En-DU, who tends the wool-flock, delivered it to Sasa, the wife of King Urukagina of Lagash. The animal was formally handed over to her at the palace. One sheep, accounted for.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 wool-sheep — na-e-ma-ri (offering/allocation). Month: 'wool-distribution.' En-DU, shepherd of the wool-sheep, (delivered it) to Sasa, wife of Urukagina, king of Lagaš; in the palace it was returned/delivered into her hand. Total: 1.
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 siki na e-ma-ri iti siki-ba-a en-DU sipa udu siki-ka-ke4 sa6-sa6 dam URU-KA-gi-na lugal lagasz-ka-ra e2-gal-la szu-na i3-ni-gi4 1(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 260. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220910) — 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.