Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1177
About this tablet
A small receipt from Garšana, a private estate-town in southern Iraq, dated to the reign of Šu-Suen of Ur (around 2030 BCE). It records that two sheep were expended from the account of a man named Ili-bilani, and it was sealed by the scribe Iškur-illat, who describes himself as the servant of Šu-Kabta, the estate's master. Šu-Kabta is usually titled 'general' in this archive, so his appearance here as 'physician' is a notable detail. Routine livestock paperwork like this is how we know the day-to-day workings of an Ur III household economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two sheep were taken out of Ili-bilani's stock. Date: the month of the gazelle-eating festival, in the year Šu-Suen, king of Ur, built the temple of Šara in Umma. The tablet was sealed with the seal of Iškur-illat the scribe, son of Abia, which identifies him as the servant of Šu-Kabta the physician, son of Naram-ili.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 sheep, from Ili-bilani withdrawn. Month: "Gazelle-eating" (mašda-gu). Year: "Šu-Suen, king of Ur, built the [temple] of Šara in Umma." (Seal:) Šu-Kabta, the physician, son of Naram-ili: Iškur-illat, the scribe, son of Abia, (is) your servant.
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) udu ki i3-li2-bi-la-ni-ta ba-zi iti masz-da3-gu7 mu szu-suen lugal# uri5-ma-ke4 [e2] szara2 umma-ka mu-du3 szu-kab2-ta a-zu dumu na-ra-am-i3-li2 iszkur-illat dub-sar dumu a-bi2-a ARAD2-zu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1177. 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 48-02-014 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322416). 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.