Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0710
About this tablet
A small wool receipt from Garšana, a private estate in southern Iraq, dated to the reign of Šu-Suen of Ur (around 2035 BCE). A felt-worker named Tadina takes delivery of two small lots of combed wool of different grades from Aštaqqar, the woman who ran the estate's textile workshop, and rolls his seal over the tablet to confirm receipt. It is a glimpse of the step-by-step bookkeeping behind textile production in the Ur III economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Received from Aštaqqar: 12 shekels of combed wool of fourth grade, second quality, and two-thirds of a mina of ordinary combed wool. The recipient is Tadina, the felt-worker. Dated to the month of 'Piglet-eating,' in the year Šu-Suen, king of Ur, built the temple of Šara at Umma. Tadina's seal, reading 'Tadina, felt-worker,' is impressed on the tablet.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine12 shekels of combed wool, fourth-quality (4th grade, second quality), 2/3 mina of combed wool, ordinary quality, [from Aš]taqqar; [Tadina] the felt-[worker] received. [Month:] 'Piglet-eating' (šeš-da-gu₇), year: 'Šu-Suen, king of Ur, built the temple of Šara in Umma.' (Seal:) Tadina, felt-worker.
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
1(u) 2(disz) gin2 siki garigx(|ZUM.SI|) ak 4(disz)-kam us2 2/3(disz) ma-na siki garigx(|ZUM.SI|) ak du [ki asz]-ta2-qar-ta [ta2-di-na] tug2-[du8] [szu] ba#-ti# [iti] ses-da-gu7 mu szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 e2-[]szara2 umma-ka mu-du3 ta-di2-na tug2-du8
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0710. 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 49-02-006 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323229). 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.