Position in chronology
DP 264
About this tablet
This is a small clay administrative tablet from Girsu (modern Tello) in southern Iraq, dating to the Early Dynastic IIIb period, part of the state archive of the city of Lagash. It records the movement of a modest quantity of goods — jars of scented oil and an allotment of barley — through the hands of named officials, including En-iggal, a manager (nu-banda3) who appears constantly across hundreds of these Girsu administrative texts as a key figure overseeing the household of the ruler's wife (the 'É-munus'). It is a routine bookkeeping entry, but it is exactly this kind of granular, everyday record-keeping — down to single jars and small barley allotments — that lets historians reconstruct how one of the world's earliest bureaucratic states actually functioned.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Four jars of scented oil were handled — two of them being the large 'kur'-type jars — passing via a man named En-šu to the oil-vessel keeper (the 'ka-šagan' official), who returned them by hand. The manager En-iggal was responsible for overseeing this. In the month called 'Sheep-for-Barley,' barley belonging to Ningirsu's estate was measured out and delivered to the Women's Household — two units in total.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 jars of scented/pressed oil — via (conveyed by): (of these jars, the 'kur'-type ones are 2) — En-šu, (to/by) the ka-šagan (oil-vessel official), (who) returned (it) by hand. En-iggal, the manager (nu-banda3). Month: 'Sheep-for-Barley'; barley [of] Ningirsu's (estate/temple) — into the É-munus (Women's Household), measured/poured out: 2.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
4(asz@c) dug i3-ir-a giri3 dug kur-bi 2(disz@t)-am6 en-szu ka-szagan-ke4 szu-a bi2-gi4 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 iti udu-sze3 sze [a] nin-gir2-[su]-ka-ka e2-munus-a i3-de2 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 264. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220914) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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.