Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0882
About this tablet
A small receipt from Garšana, a private estate in southern Iraq, dated to the reign of Šu-Suen of Ur (around 2030 BCE). The text appears twice because the tablet was sealed inside a clay envelope, and both the tablet and the envelope carried the same record: a leatherworker named Anaḫ-ilī took two sheep hides from the storekeeper Iškur-illat. The year is named after a royal military campaign against Zabšali in the Zagros mountains — a reminder that even the most mundane paperwork was dated by the king's wars.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: two sheep hides, handed over by Iškur-illat to Anaḫ-ilī. Dated in the month of the Great Festival, in the year Zabšali was destroyed. The envelope copy repeats the same entry, adding that Anaḫ-ilī is the leatherworker and giving the fuller date formula: the year King Šu-Suen of Ur destroyed the land of Zabšali. The seal impression reads: Anaḫ-ilī, leatherworker, son of Saba.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[2] sheep hides, from Iškur-illat Anaḫ-ilī received. Month: Ezem-maḫ. Year: "The land of Zabšali was destroyed." 2 [sheep hides], from Iškur-illat Anaḫ-ilī, the leatherworker, received. [Month:] Ezem-[maḫ]. Year: "Šu-Suen, king of Ur, destroyed the land of Zabšali." (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
[2(disz)] kusz udu ki iszkur-illat-ta a-na-ah-i3-li2 szu ba-an-ti iti ezem-mah mu ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul 2(disz) [kusz udu] ki iszkur-illat-ta a-na-ah-i3-li2 aszgab szu ba-an-ti# [iti] ezem#-[mah] mu szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul an-na-ah-i3-li2 aszgab dumu sa2-ba
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0882. 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 48-04-018 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322532). 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.