Position in chronology
DP 285
About this tablet
A temple delivery receipt from the Sumerian city of Girsu, around 2400 BCE, in the archive of the household of the ruler's wife at Lagash. It records fish, salt, and fish-spawn brought in by a priest for the 'malt-eating festival' of the goddess Nanshe — one of the great religious feasts of the Lagash calendar. Tablets like this show how mythology and economy intertwined: the gods' festivals were provisioned through meticulous bookkeeping of very ordinary foodstuffs.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Delivery record: ten tar-fish, one load of gur-fish, three loads of ubi-fish, three crates of salt, and two baskets of small saltwater fish (fish-spawn). All of it came in by the basket-load for the malt-eating festival of the goddess Nanshe. It was brought by Gala-tur, the anointed priest of A-duna. Filed in year one.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 tar-fish(?), 1 load of gur-fish(?), 3 loads of ubi-fish, 3 carrying-crates of salt, 2 reed baskets of sea-spawn (small sea fish), — fish (brought in) baskets for the malt-eating festival of Nanshe — Gala-tur, the anointed (gudu-)priest of A-duna, brought (this). 1st (year).
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
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-fable-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 witness to the extensive livestock administration of the Ur III state. Numerous surviving accounts let historians study deliveries, redistribution and official responsibility in unusual detail.
A major witness to the Mesopotamian Flood tradition and its relationship to later biblical literature. The date of this particular copy must be distinguished from the older history of the story.