Position in chronology
DP 341
About this tablet
This small clay tablet from Girsu (modern Tello), dating to the Early Dynastic (Presargonic) period, is a routine fish-ration account of the kind kept by the temple and palace administration of the city-state of Lagash. It records two separate consignments of fish — gir-fish and sumasz-fish — bundled up for a religious offering (nidba), one batch handled through the governor's household and another through the household of 'the woman' (likely the ruler's wife, whose establishment ran a parallel administration), plus a further quantity of fish issued as wages to workers. An official named Enna-Umu is recorded as responsible for the final tally. Texts like this survive by the thousands from Lagash and give us an extraordinarily detailed picture of how a Sumerian temple-state fed its gods, officials, and laborers around 2400 BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fish-ration tally. Three hundred gir-fish and six hundred sumasz-fish were bundled up by the governor's office for a religious offering. A separate lot of three hundred sixty sumasz-fish was bundled up by the queen's ('the woman's') household, also for the offering. Additional fish were paid out as wages to workers. A man named Enna-Umu is recorded as having charge of these fish; the tablet closes with the number four, likely a tally or reference mark for the account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine300 gir-fish (a-de2 type), 600 sumasz-fish: the governor (ensi2), for the offering (nidba), tied (them) up. 360 sumasz-fish: the woman (munus), for the offering (nidba), tied (them) up. Fish, (as) wages, disbursed. Enna-Umu has (them) at his disposal/in his charge. 4.
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
5(gesz2@c) gir a-de2 1(gesz'u@c) sumasz ensi2-ke4 nidba!-sze3 i3-kesz2 6(gesz2@c) sumasz munus-e nidba!-sze3 i3-kesz2 ku6 a2 e3-e3 en-na-u4-mu an-da-gal2-la-am6 4(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 341. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220991) — 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.