Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0235
About this tablet
A labor account from Garšana, a private estate town in southern Iraq around 2037 BCE, during the reign of Šu-Suen of Ur. It records a small work gang cutting thorn-brush (used for fuel and fencing) in the fields at Karkar, towing a boat there and back, loading it, and hauling the cargo from the quay to the storehouse. The scribe carefully converts the harvest into labor-days at a fixed quota — four bundles per man per day — which is exactly how the Ur III bureaucracy measured everything. Tablets like this one, from the Garšana archive now at Cornell, let us watch a single day's manual work being priced and filed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ten bundles of thornwood were cut. At the standard rate of four bundles per man per day, that comes to two and a half man-days of work in the fields at Karkar. Separately: four men for one day towing the boat from Garšana up to Karkar; four men for one day loading the boat; four men for one day on the return trip from Karkar to Garšana; and four men for one day carrying the load from the quay up to the storehouse. Foreman: Šu-Dumuzi. Filed in the month of the Šulgi Festival, in the year Šu-Suen became king.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 bundles of thorn-wood (acacia brush). The work-quota of a workman: 4 bundles each; its labor: 2 1/2 workdays. To the field Karkar — thorn-wood cut. 4 workmen for 1 day: from Garšana to Karkar, boat towed (upstream). 4 workmen for 1 day: boat loaded. 4 workmen for 1 day: from Karkar to Garšana. 4 workmen for 1 day: from the quay to the storehouse, carrying. Overseer: Šu-Dumuzi. Month: ezem-Šulgi ("Festival of Šulgi"). Year: Šu-Suen [(became) king].
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(u) gu-nigin2 kiszi17 a2 gurusz-a 4(disz) gu-nigin2-ta a2-bi 2(disz) 1/2(disz) u4 1(disz)-sze3 a-sza3 karkar-sze3 kiszi17 ku5-ra2 4(disz) gurusz u4 1(disz)-sze3 gar-sza-an-na-ta karkar-sze3 ma2 gid2-da 4(disz) gurusz u4 1(disz)-sze3 ma2#-gar#-ra 4(disz) gurusz u4 1(disz)-sze3 karkar[-ta] gar-sza-an-na-sze3 4(disz) gurusz u4 1(disz)-sze3 kar-ta ga2-nun-sze3 ga6-ga2# ugula szu-dumu-zi iti ezem-szul-gi mu szu-suen [lugal]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0235. 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 48-06-041 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322630). 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.