Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0385
About this tablet
A small flour-and-bread disbursement from Garšana, a private estate town in southern Iraq run by the general-physician Šu-Kabta and his wife Simat-Ištaran, a sister of King Šu-Suen (c. 2030 BCE). The scribe logs the day's food issued to a construction crew — builders and hired laborers, plus a portion for Šu-Kabta's own messenger — and, separately, a little flour set aside to be strewn as a ritual offering when a buttress wall of the house was to be built. It is dated to the day, and the withdrawal is charged against a storekeeper named Malik-bani. Documents like this one, from a well-preserved private archive, show how Ur III bureaucracy tracked even the ceremonial handful of flour poured out at a building site.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Issued today: bread, barley flour, barley, and one sila plus ten shekels of fine groats as the food allowance for the building crew. Five sila of bread went to the foreman of the hired workmen and his men, and three sila to Šu-Kabta's messenger. A further one sila of flour and half a sila of fine meal were set aside to be scattered as an offering for the construction of the house's buttress wall. Handled by the scribe Puzur-Ninkar; debited to Malik-bani's account. At Garšana, in the month of ki-siki-Ninazu, in the year King Šu-Suen erected the great stele for Enlil and Ninlil — day 7.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] sila of bread; [n sila] of semolina flour (dabin); [n] sila of barley; 1 sila 10 gin of fine groats — fodder-rations of the builders. 5 sila of bread: the foreman of the hired workers consumed (it). 3 sila: the messenger of Šu-Kabta. 1 sila of semolina flour, 1/2 sila of fine flour (eša): for the strewing (of flour), for building the buttress wall of the house. Via Puzur-Ninkar, the scribe. From Malik-bani it was expended. In Garšana. Month: ki-siki-Ninazu. Year: Šu-Suen, king of Ur, erected the great stele for Enlil and Ninlil. [Day] 7.
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
[n] sila3 ninda [n sila3] dabin [n] sila3 sze 1(disz) sila3 1(u) gin2 nig2-ar3-ra saga sza3-gal szitim-e-ne 5(disz) sila3 ninda ugula lu2 hun-ga2-e-ne ib2-gu7 3(disz) sila3 lu2 kin-gi4-a szu-kab-ta 1(disz) sila3 dabin 1/2(disz) sila3 esza dub-dub-de3 bad3#?-us2# e2-a du3-de3 giri3#-puzur4-nin-kar-ke3 dub-sar ki ma-lik-ba-ni-ta ba-zi sza3 gar-sza-an-na iti ki-siki nin-a-zu mu szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 [na]-ru2-a-mah [en]-lil2# nin-lil2-[ra mu]-ne-du3 [u4 n?] 7(disz)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0385. 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 49-12-044 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323799). 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.