Position in chronology
DP 369
About this tablet
This is a delivery receipt from the state household at Girsu (modern Tello, southern Iraq), from around 2400 BCE, late in the Early Dynastic period. A team of grass-cutters, called the U2-U2 men here, brought in more than a thousand bundles of dried and fresh grass, and the grass was stored in a depot named after Mes-sadu. Fodder and reeds were an essential bulk commodity for the temple and palace estates of Lagash, which kept large herds. The tablet shows how carefully these estates tracked something as ordinary as hay.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
More than a thousand bundles of grass came in, both dried hay and fresh green grass. This was the delivery owed by the grass-cutters' team, and the grass-cutters brought it themselves. It was put into the Mes-sadu storehouse. The date is year 2 of the ruler then in office.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: 2 (×600) 10 minus 2 (×60) bundles of dried grass, green (fresh) grass — it is (the delivery) of the U2-U2 (grass-men). The U2-U2 men brought it. Into the storehouse of Mes-sadu it was brought in. Reverse: Year 2.
Our translation engine — Opus 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
2(gesz'u@c) 1(u@c) la2 2(gesz2@c) sa u2 durunx(|KU.KU|)-na u2 sig7-a U2-U2-kam lu2 U2-U2-ke4-ne mu-de6 ganun mes-sa-du-ka ba-kux(DU) 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 369. 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 (P221019) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.