Position in chronology
TSA 49
About this tablet
This is not a transaction record but a label — the tag that sat with a basket or container of clay tablets in an archive at Girsu, in the Sumerian state of Lagash, around 2350 BCE. It identifies the contents as the accounts of two classes of fishermen, those who worked the sea and those who worked the fresh water, and files them under the household of Baranamtara, queen and wife of the ruler Lugalanda, in the second year of his reign. Baranamtara ran one of the best-documented economic households in early Mesopotamia, and labels like this one are the reason we can still reconstruct how her estate was organized.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Archive label: basket of tablets — the delivery accounts of the saltwater fishermen and the freshwater fishermen. Filed under the household of Queen Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, governor of Lagash. Year 2 of his reign.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[Basket] of tablets: (records of) the [fisher]men of the sea and the fishermen of the sweet water, which they delivered. Baranamtara, wife of Lugalanda, ruler (ensi) of Lagash. (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
[pisan]-dub [szu]-ku6 ab-ba-ke4-ne szu-ku6 a du10-ga-ke4-ne mu-de6-a bara2-nam-tar-ra dam lugal-an-da ensi2 lagasz 2(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TSA 49. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium (P221410) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.