Position in chronology
Nik 1, 073
About this tablet
This is a small cushion-shaped administrative tablet from Girsu (modern Tello), dating to the Early Dynastic period — one of thousands of everyday bookkeeping records kept by temple or palace scribes to track grain, livestock, and textile allotments. It records a substantial quantity of barley, over sixteen gur, set aside as fodder for donkeys, along with what appear to be textile issues and personal names, though the tablet is broken and worn so several details are lost. Such texts, though modest in appearance, are the backbone of what we know about the economic administration of one of the earliest cities in human history.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records 16 gur and 2 barig of barley, measured in the large standard 'gur-saggal' unit — a fairly large allocation, about 2,340 liters — set aside as feed for donkeys. A line naming a year is broken away. The text then turns to a person, apparently a woman named Nin-something, followed by an entry for one or more garments, and finally what may be the name Mesandu, though this part of the tablet is too damaged to read in full. The overall impression is of a short administrative memo tracking grain and cloth disbursements, with the ending largely lost to breakage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine16 gur 2 barig barley, gur-saggal (the large standard measure) — barley for the donkeys to eat. Year(?): [...] for Nin-[...]ki(?) — garment(s): ... garment [...] [Mesan]du(?) [...]
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(u@c) 6(asz@c) 2(barig@c) sze gur saggal sze ansze gu7-de3 mu? [...] nin-[x]-ki-ra TUG2 mu [x] TUG2 [...] [mes-an]-du [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 073. 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: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation (P221842) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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