Position in chronology
Nik 1, 232
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic III administrative tablet from Girsu (modern Tello), recording quantities of animal hides — sheep, goats, large oxen, and calves — handed over by an overseer named Ur-igi-ama-še to a man named Šul-binum, with the transaction formally entered ('placed') to Šul-binum's account. Texts like this belonged to the large archive of the temple household of the goddess Bau at Girsu, part of the Nik 1 corpus of everyday economic records from around 2400 BCE. It is a routine but historically rich document: proof that Sumerian institutions already tracked leather goods — likely destined for sandals, harnesses, or containers — with careful bureaucratic precision over 4,000 years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a hide inventory. It records 470 sheep hides, 84 goat hides, 9 hides from large oxen, and 8 calf hides. The overseer Ur-igi-ama-še handed these over, and the transaction was recorded and credited to the account of a man named Šul-binum via a transfer tablet. In short: a receipt logging the delivery of animal hides from one official's authority into another's account books.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine8(gešʼu) minus 10 hides of sheep, 1(gešʼu) 20 4 hides of goats/kids, 10 minus 1 hides of large oxen, 8 hides of calves (of oxen) — (for/from) Ur-igi-ama-še, the overseer (nubanda), to [Šul]-bi-num, [the tablet] of transfer(?) — it was placed to his account.
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
8(gesz2@c) la2 1(u@c) kusz udu 1(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 4(asz@c) kusz masz 1(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) kusz gu4 gal-gal 8(asz@c) kusz amar gu4 ur-igi-ama-sze3 [nu]-banda3 [SZUL]-bi2-[nu]-um-ra [dub] e-da-bala-a-a gu2-na <e>-ne2-gar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 232. 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 (P222001) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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