Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0992
About this tablet
An accounting record from Garšana, an Ur III estate town in southern Iraq, dated to the reign of Šu-Suen (c. 2030 BCE). It logs the release of flour and a butchered ox, earmarked 'for the wall' — likely provisions connected with the construction of Garšana's fortification wall, a project well documented in this archive. Two officials, including a scribe named after the healing goddess Ninkarak, handled the transfer, and the tablet is explicitly marked as a duplicate copy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Issued from the stock of Aḫu-waqar: some dabin flour and some eša flour (the amounts are broken off), plus one slaughtered ox, all for the wall. Iškur-illat and the scribe Puzur-Ninkarak handled the delivery, at Garšana. Dated to the seventh day of the Festival-of-Šulgi month, in the year Šu-Suen built the great stele for Enlil and Ninlil. This tablet is a file copy.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] dabin-flour, [...] eša-flour, [1] slaughtered ox, for the (city) wall; from Aḫu-waqar withdrawn. Conveyor: Iškur-illat and Puzur-Ninkarak, the scribe. In Garšana. Month: Festival of Šulgi. Year: Šu-Suen the king built the great stele for Enlil (and) Ninlil. Day 7. 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
[...] dabin [...] esza [1(disz)] gu4-gaz bad3-sze3 ki# a-hu-wa-qar-ta ba-zi giri3 iszkur-illat u3# puzur4#-nin-kar#-ke3 dub-sar sza3 gar#-sza#-an-na iti ezem#-szul-gi mu szu-suen lugal-e [na]-ru2-a-mah en-lil2 []nin-lil2-ra mu#-ne-du3 u4 7(disz)-kam gaba-ri
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0992. 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 48-06-025 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322614). 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.