Position in chronology
DP 270
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P220920.
Translation · AI engine
read from photo5 jars of finest oil, 10 jars of cow-milk oil — [for] En-šugi-gi, for Kašagan, for the oil-pressing (lit. 'oil being carried to/for the anointing'), [supervised by] En-iggal, the overseer (nu-banda). In the month 'sheep-for-barley, barley being carried,' at [the temple of] Nanše, in the women's house, it was poured out — 3 [vessels].
9 uncertain terms ↓
- i3 nun — Literally 'prince/noble oil,' conventionally translated 'finest oil' or 'clarified/pure oil' (ghee-like product). The precise distinction from i3 ab2 is debated — nun may indicate quality grade rather than source animal.
- i3 ab2 — Oil derived from cows (ab2 = cow); possibly butter-fat or ghee of bovine origin, as opposed to the finer nun-grade oil. The exact processing difference is unclear.
- en-szu-gi4-gi4 — Personal name; literally something like 'Lord who returns the hand(?)' — the ŠU element may be 'hand/receive' and gi4-gi4 'to return repeatedly.' Standard Girsu personal name; no ambiguity about it being a name, but etymology is uncertain.
- ka-szagan-ra — Could be a personal name 'Kašagan' in the dative, or a toponym/institutional designation ('mouth of the šagan'). Most editors treat it as a personal name in this administrative context.
- i3-ir-a ra2-de3 — Difficult verbal phrase; possibly 'to carry/bring the oil for anointing/pressing.' The compound ir-ra / ra2-de3 is debated: could relate to the process of oil extraction or transport. Some read it as a locative-terminative construction.
- iti udu-sze3 sze a il2-la — Month name: 'the month of (bringing) sheep for barley, barley being lifted/carried.' An Early Dynastic Girsu calendar month; the exact agricultural activity it commemorates is interpreted but not entirely certain.
- e2-munus-a — Literally 'house of the woman/women'; an institutional building within the Nanše temple complex. Whether it denotes a harem, a weaving house, or a female personnel dormitory is debated in the literature.
- i3-na-de2 — Verbal form: 'it was poured out (into/for them).' de2 = to pour; na = 3rd person singular patient marker in the verbal chain. Standard disbursement verb in oil accounts.
- 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|) — A complex composed sign, a variant numeral or vessel-count notation. The exact reading of the composed sign |ASZxDISZ@t| and what it counts here (vessels? additional jars?) cannot be fully verified from the photograph at this resolution.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows a small, well-rounded Early Dynastic lenticular tablet (AO 13478, Louvre) displayed in a multi-face layout: obverse (main inscribed face with ruled columns), edges (left edge bears the modern museum ink number 'AO 13478'), and reverse (largely blank/smoothed, with faint ruling lines visible). The obverse is divided into two columns by a vertical line and several horizontal rulings, giving approximately 5–6 rows. The clay surface is in reasonably good condition — wedges are legible though slightly worn; no major breakage or lacunae are apparent on the obverse. Visually I can confirm signs consistent with DUG (jar determinative), numerals (groups of diagonal wedges), and what appear to be personal name elements in the middle rows; the lower rows show more complex sign clusters consistent with the verbal and locative phrases in the transliteration. The transliteration supplied by the project is consistent with what the photograph shows in terms of line-count and columnar arrangement. The reading i3 nun ('finest/clarified oil') and i3 ab2 ('cow-milk oil / ghee') are standard Early Dynastic commodity designations well-attested from Girsu archives. The personal names En-šugi-gi and En-iggal, and the title nu-banda (overseer), are also well-attested from the Lagaš corpus. The month name 'udu-sze3 sze a il2-la' is a known Early Dynastic Girsu month designation. The phrase 'i3-na-de2' (it was poured out) and the location 'e2-munus-a' (women's house) are intelligible but the final numeral '3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)' is a complex sign I cannot fully verify from the photo at this resolution. No significant discrepancies between photo and transliteration were detected; confidence is medium rather than high primarily because edge and reverse signs and the complex final sign cannot be verified at the available resolution.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 16, 2026 · 2256 in / 1531 out tokens
Transliteration
5(asz@c) dug i3 nun 1(u@c) dug i3 ab2 en-szu-gi4-gi4 ka-szagan-ra i3-ir-a ra2-de3 en-ig-gal nu-banda3 iti udu-sze3 sze a il2-la nansze-ka e2-munus-a i3-na-de2 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 270. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220920) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P220920..
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One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.