Position in chronology
DP 287
About this tablet
An administrative receipt from Girsu in southern Iraq, around 2350 BCE, drawn up in the great institutional household of Lagash's ruling family. Two fishermen, Lugal-ša and Ne-sag, deliver hundreds of fish — partly to clear old arrears, partly as their regular basket-tax — which the well-known overseer En-iggal books in during the festival month of the goddess Nanshe. Remarkably, the fish are brought into a house built for Gilgamesh: one of the earliest documents attesting a cult of the hero-king Gilgamesh, centuries before the famous epic was composed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two fish deliveries are logged here. Lugal-ša handed over a batch of tar-fish (the number is damaged) and 480 ubi-fish — this covered the shortfall he still owed toward the offering table. Ne-sag delivered 20 tar-fish, 420 ubi-fish, and 60 kimu-fish, which counted as his obligatory basket-tax. En-iggal, the overseer, received all of it during the month of Nanshe's Malt-Eating Festival and brought the fish into the newly built house of Gilgamesh. Dated to year 2.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [x] tar-fish, 480 (8 × 60) ubi-fish: (from) Lugal-ša; it is what was brought out (in settlement) of the arrears owed to the (offering) table. 20 tar-fish, 420 (7 × 60) ubi-fish, 60 kimu-fish: (from) Ne-sag; they are fish of the basket-duty (dusu-obligation). (reverse) En-iggal, the overseer, in the [month] of the Festival of Malt-Eating of Nanshe, into the house built (as) the E-bar of Gilgamesh (Bil-aga-mes), delivered (them). (Year) 2.
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
[x] tar 8(gesz2@c) ubi lugal-sza3 banszur la2-a e3-a-am6 2(u@c) tar 7(gesz2@c) ubi 1(gesz2@c) ki-mu11 ne-sag ku6 dusu-kam en-ig-gal nu-banda3 [iti] ezem munu4 gu7 nansze-ka e2 e2-bar bil3-aga3-mes-ka du3-a [i3]-kux(DU) 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 287. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220937) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.
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.