Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0721
About this tablet
A wool-issue receipt from Garšana, a private estate and town in southern Iraq, dated to the reign of Šu-Suen of Ur (year 9, about 2029 BCE). Roughly 240 kilograms of ordinary-grade wool were handed out from the stores of the official Iškur-illat as clothing allotments for the estate's male and female workers, with the scribe Ea-šar overseeing the transfer. The tablet is marked as a copy, a reminder that Ur III bookkeepers kept duplicate records to audit each other.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Eight talents and half a mina of ordinary wool were issued as wool rations for the female and male workers. The wool came out of Iškur-illat's stores; the transfer was handled by Ea-šar, the scribe, at Garšana. Dated to the Akiti month, in the year Šu-Suen, king of Ur, built the temple of Šara at Umma. This tablet is a duplicate copy.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine8 talents (and) 1/2 mina of ordinary wool: wool allotment(s) for the female and male workers. [From] Iškur-illat it was [dis]bursed. Conveyor: Ea-šar, the scribe. [In Gar]šana. Month: Akiti. Year: "Šu-Suen, king of Ur, built the temple of Šara in Umma." 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
8(asz) gu2 1/2(disz) ma-na siki du siki# ba geme2 ARAD2 [ki ]iszkur-illat-ta [ba]-zi# giri3 e2-a-szar dub-sar [sza3 gar]-sza-an-na iti# a2-ki-ti mu szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 e2 szara2 umma-ka mu-du3 gaba-[ri]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0721. 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 48-06-028 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322617). 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.