Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1277
About this tablet
An Ur III receipt from Garšana, a small estate town in southern Iraq run by the general Šu-Kabta and the princess Simat-Ištaran, dated to the seventh year of King Šu-Sîn (c. 2030 BCE). It records nearly seven thousand bundles of fuel reed and another thousand of fresh reed handed over by one official, Pušu-kīn, to another, Iškur-illat, with a barge-crew foreman named Bēlī-ilī responsible for the transfer — reeds moved by water, as bulk cargo always was in the marshy south. The note at the end, gaba-ri, tells us this clay tablet is not the original receipt but an archival duplicate.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: 6,920 bundles of fuel reed, packed at 15 bundles to the bale, and 1,074 bundles of fresh reed, packed at 10 bundles to the bale. Transferred from Pušu-kīn's stock; Iškur-illat took delivery. Bēlī-ilī, the foreman in charge of the tow-barges, handled the shipment. Filed in the month of maš-dà-gu₇, in the year King Šu-Sîn destroyed the land of Zabšali. This tablet is a duplicate copy.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine6,920 bundles (sa) of gi-NE (fuel reed), at 15 bundles per gu-nigin (bale) — 1,074 bundles (sa) of gi-zi (fresh reed), [at] 10 bundles per [gu-nigin] — from Pušu-kīn Iškur-illat has received. Under the authority of Bēlī-ilī, foreman of the barge-towing crew. Month: maš-dà-gu₇ ("gazelle-eating"). Year: Šu-Sîn the king destroyed the land of Zabšali (Šu-Sîn 7). Copy (gaba-ri).
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
1(szar2) 5(gesz'u) 5(gesz2) 2(u) sa gi NE gu-nigin2 1(u) 5(disz) sa-ta 1(gesz'u) 7(gesz2) 5(u) 4(disz) sa gi-zi [gu-nigin2] 1(u) sa-ta ki pu-szu-ki-in-ta iszkur-illat szu ba-an-ti giri3 be-li2-i3-li2 ugula ma2 gid2 iti masz2-da3-gu7 mu szu-suen lugal-e ma-<da> za-ab-sza-li mu-hul gaba-ri
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1277. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y6 — Land of Zabšali destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-06-030 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322619). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.
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.