Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0315
About this tablet
A brick-accounting docket from Garšana, a private estate town in southern Mesopotamia, dated to the third year of King Šu-Suen of Ur (about 2035 BCE). It records a delivery of 73 1/3 sar of mud bricks — some tens of thousands of bricks — credited to Iddin-Ea, the overseer of a gang of hired laborers, with the quantity already consumed on the building site subtracted from the total. Two officials, Iškur-illat and the scribe Puzur-Ninkar, are named as the responsible parties, and the last line notes that the tablet itself is a duplicate of an earlier record. Documents like this one come from the vast construction archive of the estate of the general Šu-Kabta and his wife Simat-Ištaran, where brick production and building work were tracked down to the fraction.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Received: 73 1/3 sar of mud brick, with the amount already used on site deducted from the total. The delivery is booked to Iddin-Ea, foreman of the hired-labor crew, handled by Ba-zi. This is the reckoning, drawn up under Iškur-illat and the scribe Puzur-Ninkar. Dated to the month of the festival of Ninazu, in the year King Šu-Suen erected the great stele for Enlil and Ninlil. Filed as a duplicate copy.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine73 1/3 sar of bricks — its consumption (bi₂-gu₇) has been deducted therefrom. Delivery. Iddin-Ea, foreman of the hired workers. Via Ba-zi. Account (reckoning). Via Iškur-illat and Puzur-Ninkar, [the scribe]. Month: festival-of-Ninazu. Year: Šu-Suen the king erected the great stele for Enlil and Ninlil. (This tablet is a) copy.
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(gesz2) 1(u) 3(disz) 1/3(disz) sar sig4 bi2-gu7-bi ib2-ta-zi mu-kux(DU) i-din-e2-a ugula lu2 hun-ga2 giri3 ba-zi szid-da giri3 iszkur-illat u3 puzur4-nin-kar-ke3# [dub-sar] iti ezem-nin-a-zu mu szu-suen lugal [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, 0315. 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 49-15-527 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P324533). 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.