Position in chronology
DP 340
About this tablet
This is a small round clay docket from the temple archives of Girsu (ancient Lagash), dated to the Early Dynastic IIIb period, roughly the 24th century BCE. It records rations of malt — the raw material for beer — issued in fixed capacity measures (barig and ban) to named individuals and to institutions: a shrine, the 'house of the god,' and finally a brewer who used the malt to produce beer. Thousands of such small, lentil-shaped tablets survive from the Lagash temple economy of the goddess Bau; together they form one of the earliest and most detailed bureaucratic records of any human institution, tracking barley, malt, and beer as they moved through a redistributive temple economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a short receipt from a temple storehouse in the city of Girsu. It records that 60 liters of malt were set aside for making pale beer and another 60 liters for dark beer, both credited to a man named Muanedu and earmarked for the shrine. Separately, 90 liters of malt went to someone named Mesandu, with 40 more liters going to the temple of the god. A further 90 liters of malt — connected to a place associated with the god Utu — along with malt belonging to a man named Nammahni, was again recorded under Muanedu's name and handed over to the brewer to be used up in brewing. The tablet closes with a partly broken number, likely a subtotal or tally mark that can no longer be read with certainty.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 barig malt, (for) pale beer, 1 barig malt, (for) dark beer, (assigned to) Muanedu — it is for the shrine. 1 barig 2 ban malt: Mesandu, 4 ban malt — it is for the house of the god. 1 barig 2 ban malt: place of [Utu] — malt of Nammahni, (assigned to) Muanedu, to the brewer — it was given to be consumed. 2 [(sign, broken)]
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(barig@c) munu4 kas sig15 1(barig@c) munu4 kas ge6 mu-an-ne2-du10 esz3-kam 1(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) munu4 mes-an-du 4(ban2@c) munu4 e2 dingir-ra-kam 1(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) munu4 ki [utu-kam] munu4 nam-mah-ni mu-an-ne2-du10 lu2 lungax(|BIxNIG2|)-ra i3-[ni]-gu7# 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 340. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220990) — 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.