Position in chronology
DP 285
About this tablet
This small cushion-shaped tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello) is a routine temple ration or offering account from the Early Dynastic period, roughly the mid-third millennium BCE. It records quantities of bread, salt, and fish set aside for the festival of the goddess Nanše, delivered under the responsibility of a junior lament-singer (gala-tur) and a priest named Adun'a. Texts like this one — part of the huge Girsu temple archive published as 'Documents Présargoniques' — are among the oldest detailed bookkeeping records in existence, showing how a Sumerian temple tracked food for its gods and staff.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short receipt: ten loaves of one bread type, one loaf of another, three loaves of a third kind, three loads of salt, and two containers of aged salted fish, plus fish in a basket and festival malt that was used up — all supplied for the festival of the goddess Nanše. The junior temple singer and the priest Adun'a were the ones who brought these goods in, and the record closes with a tally mark of one.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 tar-loaves, 1 gu-gur10-loaf, 3 gu-ubi-loaves, 3 gab-carrying-loads of salt, 2 gurdub-vessels of aged agargara-fish, fish (in) a dusu-basket, festival malt — consumed, (for) the festival of Nanše. The junior gala-singer (and) the gudu-priest Adun'a — brought (it); total: 1.
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
1(u@c) tar 1(asz@c) gu2 gur10 3(asz@c) gu2 ubi 3(asz@c) gab2-il2 mun 2(asz@c) gurdub agargara ab-ba ku6 dusu ezem munu4 gu7 nansze-ka gala-tur gudu4 a-dun-a-ke4 mu-de6-a 1(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 285. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220935) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.