Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1390
About this tablet
A small administrative receipt from Garšana, a private household estate in the province of Umma in southern Iraq, dating to the 8th year of King Šu-Suen of the Third Dynasty of Ur (around 2030 BCE). It records that a man named Iškur-illat took delivery of 34 items (the commodity itself is lost in a break) from Aya-kalla, a well-attested official in this archive. Thousands of such receipts survive from this period, together forming one of the most densely documented economies of the ancient world.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Iškur-illat received a delivery from Aya-kalla: 34 units of some commodity, plus one more item whose name is broken away — the damage to the tablet's first line means we can't tell what was being handed over. The receipt closes with the standard date formula: the year King Šu-Suen of Ur built the magnificent ceremonial barge for the gods Enlil and Ninlil — his eighth year on the throne. A few lines in the middle are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine34 [...] , 1(?) rab-[...], from Aya-kalla did Iškur-illat [receive]. [...] (break) Year: "Šu-Suen, king of Ur, fashioned the magnificent barge for [Enlil] (and) Ninlil."
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
3(u) 4(disz) [...] 1(disz)? ra-ab-[...] ki a-a-kal-la-ta []iszkur-illat [szu ba-ti] [...] mu szu-suen lugal uri5-[ma-ke4] ma2-gur8-mah [en-lil2] nin-lil2-ra mu-ne#-dim2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1390. 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 49-08-011 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323436). 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.