Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0468
About this tablet
A short accounting receipt from Garšana, a private estate in southern Iraq run by the general and physician Šu-Kabta and the princess Simat-Ištaran, dated to the reign of Šu-Suen (about 2035 BCE). It records just over five gur (roughly 1,500 liters) of barley handed out as gifts to the estate's slave workforce, drawn from stock managed by the steward Iškur-illat. Its final word, 'copy,' shows the archive kept duplicates of its paperwork — a glimpse of how a wealthy Ur III household tracked grain and labor.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Five gur and one ban of barley were issued as gifts to the male and female slaves of the household. The expenditure is charged to Šu-Kabta and was disbursed from the stores of Iškur-illat, at Garšana. Dated to the month of the gazelle-eating festival, in the year Šu-Suen, king of Ur, built the great ceremonial barge 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 engine5 gur 1 ban of barley — gift(s) for the female and male slaves of the household; expenditure of Šu-[Kabta]; from Iškur-[illat] disbursed. In Garšana. Month: "Gazelle-eating" (Maš-da-gu). Year: "Šu-Suen, king of Ur, fashioned the great processional barge for Enlil and Ninlil." Copy.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
5(asz) 1(ban2) sze# [gur] nig2-ba geme2 ARAD2# [hi]-a e2#-[a] zi-ga# szu-[kab-ta?] ki# iszkur#-[illat-ta] ba#-[zi] sza3 gar#-sza-na# iti masz-da3-gu7# mu# szu-suen# lugal# uri5#-ma#-[ke4] ma2#-gur8-mah en-lil2 nin-lil2-ra mu-ne-dim2 gaba-ri
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0468. 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 47-12-302 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322397). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.