Anshe's Tablet Collection

The tablet can be translated: Eniggal, the supervisor, has delivered from the warehouse of the PAP.PAP, (about) 931 liters (or: about 245 gallons) of barley grain, barley for the feeding of the donkeys, to Lugal-massu, the plough manager, in connection with the ploughing of the field Gana-DUN.UH, in the month of Carrying Grain and Water to the Sheep for Nanshe, second year.

What the Scribe Wrote

• The accent marks and subscript in the transliteration are a convention used to distinguish cuneiform signs with the same pronunciation, but different meaning.
• The superscripts are the way we represent determinatives (word classifiers). Names of deities are frequently preceded by the asterisk-looking divine symbol ^d.
• Cuneiform signs often have more than one reading or pronunciation depending on the meaning. When we can't figure out the appropriate reading for a sign or group of signs, we leave them in capital letters, as at the end of Column One and beginning of Column Three. When we are totally in the dark about a sign, we use a serial number to refer to it, for example LAK 483.

• še "barley grain"
• anše "donkey"
• kú "eat, feeding"
• LAK 483-si-ga "ploughing," although we don't know how to read the sign, there is evidence for its meaning
• sag-apin "plough manager" (sag means "head" or "chief")
• nu-banda "supervisor"
• ganun "warehouse, storage facility"
• PAP.PAP reading and exact translation uncertain, but the expression is used as a title of Baranamtara, wife of the city ruler Lugalanda
• iti "month"
• udu "sheep"
• a "water"
• íl "carry, lift, bear"
• gar "place, deliver"

This hand copy is taken from Wilhelm Förtsch, Altbabylonische Wirtschaftstexte aus der Zeit Lugalanda's und Urukagine's: Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler der königlichen Museen zu Berlin, Heft XIV. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 1916. Text No. 49. These texts are actually from the Presargonic period. We no longer use the expression Old Babylonian or Altbabylonische to refer to this early period.

The text has been edited (in German) by Josef Bauer, Altsumerische Wirtschaftstexte aus Lagasch: Studia Pohl, Vol. 9. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1972. Pp. 123-125.

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