Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0424
About this tablet
An expenditure receipt from the Ur III estate of Garšana in southern Iraq, dated to the seventh year of King Šu-Suen (about 2030 BCE). It records a quantity of dates handed out as wages to the builders and hired laborers working on a construction project — here the plastering of a brick animal shed. The final word marks the tablet as an archival duplicate of the original record, a glimpse into the bookkeeping that kept a large private household running.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A quantity of dates (the exact figure is broken off) was shared out among the builders and the hired workers on the day the brickwork on the donkey shed was being plastered. Puzur-Ninkarak the scribe handled the delivery, and the goods were booked out of the stock held by Iškur-illat. Dated to the month of the Ninazu festival in the year King Šu-Suen of Ur destroyed the land of Zabšali. This tablet is a copy.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[... sila] of dates (in) gur were distributed among the builders and the hired workers on the day of the construction work on the brick (for) the donkey [shed—plastering done]. Conveyor: Puzur-[Ninkar]ak, [the scribe]. From Iškur-illat withdrawn. Month: Festival of Ninazu. Year: Šu-Suen, king of Ur, destroyed the land of Zabšali. Copy.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[... sila3] zu2-lum gur# szitim u3 lu2 hun-ga2-e-ne ba-na-ha-la u4 al-tar sig4 ansze# [im-sumur ak] giri3 puzur4#-[nin-kar]-ke3 [dub-sar] ki iszkur-illat#-ta ba-zi iti ezem-nin-a-zu mu szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu#-[hul] gaba-ri
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0424. 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 49-09-144 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323669). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.