Position in chronology
DP 349
About this tablet
This small cushion-shaped clay tablet from Girsu (ancient Tello) is a routine Early Dynastic bookkeeping record — the kind of everyday note temple or palace administrators produced by the thousands around 2400 BCE. It logs a large quantity of reed bundles (3,690 of them) delivered from a neighboring field by an official named Enig-gal, who held the title nu-banda3, roughly 'overseer' or 'manager.' The reeds were brought to a storehouse described as 'the house at the edge of the city,' and the closing line ties the transaction to a labor allocation for the second day of some counted period. It is an unremarkable but historically valuable snapshot of how a Sumerian temple household tracked raw materials — reeds were essential for baskets, mats, roofing, and fuel — moving through its supply chain.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a delivery receipt: 3,690 bundles of reed were brought in by Enig-gal, the overseer, from an adjoining field, and handed over to the storehouse located at the edge of the city. The record closes by noting the labor charge for day two — two units. It's the ancient equivalent of a warehouse intake slip, tracking both the goods received and the workday cost of moving them.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(šar2) 1(geš2) 3(u) sa gi (3,690 bundles of reeds) Enig-gal, the overseer (nu-banda3), of the second (occasion/field) — from the adjoining field (GAN2 i3-us2-ta), he brought (it) (mu-de6); to the house at the edge of the city (e2 za3 iri-ka-ka) it was delivered (i3-kux(DU)). Labor-allocation of the 2nd day: 2 (units).
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(szar2@c) 1(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) sa gi en-ig-gal nu-banda3 2(disz@t)-kam-ma-ka GAN2 i3-us2-ta mu-de6 e2 za3 iri-ka-ka i3-kux(DU) a2 u4 2(disz@t)-kam 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 349. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220999) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.