Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0391
About this tablet
A short Ur III accounting memo from Garšana, a private estate town in southern Iraq run by the general Šu-Kabta and the princess Simat-Ištaran, dating to about 2035 BCE. It records milled barley (groats) handed out as rations to the workers of the household of Šu-Suen on the day a building was given its mud-plaster coating — a small snapshot of a construction project and the meals that kept it going. The grain was booked out of the account of an official named Iškur-illat, and the tablet is marked gaba-ri, "copy," meaning it duplicates another record in the archive.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
So many liters of milled barley, apparently the fine grade, were issued to the work crew — the laborers attached to Šu-Suen's household — and distributed among them on the day the building was plastered with mud. The next line or two are lost. The grain was charged against the account of Iškur-illat. Dated to the second month (ki-siki of Ninazu) of the year Šu-Suen, king of Ur, erected the great stele for Enlil and Ninlil. This tablet is a duplicate copy.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] sila of groats, [fine quality?], for the work-troops(?), the men of the household of Šu-Suen — it was apportioned to them when [the house] [was coated with mud-plaster]. [...] (break) [From] Iškur-illat it was expended. Month: "ki-siki of Ninazu" (month ii), Year: Šu-Suen, king of Ur, built the great stele for Enlil and Ninlil. (Copy/duplicate.)
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# nig2-ar3-ra# [saga?] erin2#?-sze3 lu2 e2-szu-suen-ke4-ne ba-na-ha-la u4 [e2]-e [im-sumur ba-ak] [...] [ki] iszkur-illat#-[ta] ba-zi 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] gaba-ri
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0391. 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 48-04-049 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322562). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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.