Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0011
About this tablet
A short labor roster from Garšana, a private estate town in southern Mesopotamia run by the general Šu-Kabta and his wife Simat-Ištaran around 2035 BCE. It counts six construction workers — builders (šitim) — assigned to the site, listed by the settlements they came from: Tunium, Dimat-Kalbum, and Izin-Erra. Dated to the seventh month of the year Šu-Sîn of Ur set up a great stele for Enlil and Ninlil, it is one of thousands of daily work-gang records from the Garšana archive that let historians reconstruct an ancient building project crew by crew.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Workforce list: two builders from Tunium, one builder from Dimat-Kalbum, and three builders from Izin-Erra — six construction workers in all, stationed at Garšana. Filed in the month of ki-siki-Ninazu, in the year King Šu-Sîn had the great stele made for Enlil and Ninlil. A few of the place names are damaged on the tablet and have been restored from context.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 workmen, builders, men of Tunium; 1 workman, builder, man of Dimat-Kalbum; 3 workmen, builders, men of [Izin-Erra]. In Garšana. Month: ki-siki-Ninazu. Year: Šu-Sîn the king fashioned the great stele for Enlil and Ninlil (= Šu-Sîn 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
2(disz) gurusz szitim lu2-tu-ni-um[] 1(disz) gurusz szitim lu2 di3-ma#-[at] kal-bu-[um] 3(disz) gurusz szitim lu2#-[i-zi-in-er3-ra] sza3 gar-sza#-[an-na] iti ki-siki nin#-[a-zu] mu szu-suen [lugal]-e na-ru2-a-[mah en-lil2] nin-lil2-ra mu-[ne-dim2]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0011. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y1 — Šu-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-07-008 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322736). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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