Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0845
About this tablet
A small receipt from the private estate of Garšana in southern Iraq, dated to the sixth year of King Šu-Suen of Ur (about 2031 BCE). A leatherworker named Ana-ḫili took delivery of a single sheepskin from the storekeeper Iškur-illat, and rolled his personal seal across the tablet to acknowledge it. Thousands of such slips let us reconstruct the day-to-day workings of an Ur III household industry, down to one hide at a time.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ana-ḫili, the leatherworker, received one hide from a grain-fattened sheep from Iškur-illat. Recorded in the month Šu-ešša, in the year King Šu-Suen of Ur set up the Great Stela for the gods Enlil and Ninlil. Sealed by Anaḫ-ilī, leatherworker, son of Saba.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 hide of a grain-fed sheep, from Iškur-illat Ana-ḫili, the leatherworker, received. Month: Šu-ešša (month 8 at Garšana), year: "Šu-Suen, king of Ur, erected the Great Stela for Enlil and Ninlil" (Šu-Suen year 6). (Seal:) Anaḫ-ilī, the leatherworker, son of Saba.
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
1(disz) kusz# udu niga ki iszkur-illat-ta a#-na-hi-li aszgab szu# ba-an-ti# iti szu-esz-sza mu szu-suen lugal uri5-ma na-ru2-a-mah en-lil2 nin-lil2-ra mu-ne-du3 an-na-ah-i3-li2 aszgab dumu sa2-ba
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0845. 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 49-09-149 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323674). 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.