Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1278
About this tablet
A reed-delivery receipt from Garšana, a private/estate settlement in southern Iraq, dated to the reign of Šu-Sîn of Ur (c. 2035 BCE). Two grades of reed — 3,540 bundles of one type and 600 of another — are handed over by a man named Pušukin and formally received by Iškur-illat, with a boat-hauling foreman, Bēlī-ilī, acting as the conveying official. Reed was bulk construction and fuel material, moved by canal barge, so the involvement of a boat-tow supervisor tells you how it travelled. The final word, gaba-ri, marks the tablet as an archival duplicate rather than the original receipt.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Received: 3,540 bundles of NE-grade reed, packed 15 bundles to a bale, and 600 bundles of ŠID-grade reed, packed 20 to a bale. The consignment came from Pušukin and was taken in by Iškur-illat; Bēlī-ilī, foreman of the boat-haulers, handled the transport. Dated to the month of the Gazelle-feast, in the year after King Šu-Sîn erected the Great Stele for Enlil and Ninlil. This tablet is a copy.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3,540 bundles of NE-reed, in bales of 15 bundles each; 600 bundles of ŠID-reed, in bales of 20 bundles each. From Pušukin, Iškur-illat has received (it). Via Bēlī-ilī, the overseer of the boat-towers. Month: "Gazelle-feast" (maš-da-gu₇). Year after: Šu-Sîn the king erected the Great Stele for Enlil and Ninlil. Copy.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
5(gesz'u) 9(gesz2) sa gi NE gu-nigin2 1(u) 5(disz) sa-ta 1(gesz'u) sa gi SZID gu-nigin2 2(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 us2-sa szu-suen lugal-e na-ru2-a-mah en-lil2 nin-lil2-ra mu-ne-du3 gaba-ri
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1278. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y2 — Year after: Šu-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-06-034 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322623). 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.