Position in chronology
DP 365
About this tablet
This is an administrative receipt from the state household of Girsu in the kingdom of Lagaš, around 2350 BCE (the Early Dynastic IIIb, or Pre-Sargonic, period). It records a shipment of 767 bundles of manu-wood, a wood related to willow and used for fuel and light construction. The overseer Šeš-lu-du loaded the bundles onto a boat at Lagaš. At the other end, the official En-iggal took delivery and put them into the reed and wood storehouse called Mesandu. The note is dated only 'year 2', meaning the second regnal year of a Lagaš ruler, most likely Lugalanda or Urukagina. It shows how carefully the palace-temple household tracked even humble bulk goods as they moved by boat between its centres.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
767 bundles of manu-wood. The overseer Šeš-lu-du loaded them onto a boat at Lagaš. Captain En-iggal took delivery and put them into the Mesandu reed storehouse. Year 2.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse col. i 767 (literally 600 + 2 × 60 + 5 × 10, minus 3) bundles of manu-wood: Šeš-lu-du, the overseer, from Lagaš loaded them into the boat. col. ii En-iggal, the nu-banda (captain), brought them into the reed storehouse of Mesandu. Reverse Year 2.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(gesz'u@c) 2(gesz2@c) 5(u@c) la2 3(asz@c) sa ma-nu szesz-lu2-du10 ugula lagasz-ta ma2-a e-me-gar en-ig-gal nu-banda3 ganun gi mes-an-du-ka i3-kux(DU) 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 365. 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 (P221015) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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