Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0478
About this tablet
A small Ur III accounting slip from Garšana, a private estate-town in southern Mesopotamia (c. 2030 BCE), recording beer issued as the standard daily ration for the crew of builders working on the town wall. The beer left the stores of a man named Erra-bani, was handed over through an intermediary called Ea-šar, and the whole entry is dated to the eighth day of the second month in the year Šu-Sin's great barge was made for Enlil and Ninlil. The tablet is explicitly labelled a 'copy' — a duplicate kept for the archive, which is why so many of these mundane Garšana records survive together.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Sixteen liters of ordinary beer, issued as the builders' regular ration while work on the city wall was underway. It was handed over by Ea-šar and charged against the account of Erra-bani, here in Garšana. Dated to the second month, day eight, in the year the great processional barge was made for Enlil and Ninlil. This tablet is a duplicate copy of the original receipt.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ban 6 sila of ordinary beer, the regular allotment (sá-du₁₁) of the builders, when the wall was being built. Via Ea-šar. From Erra-bani it was expended. In Garšana. Month: ki-siki-Ninazu. Year: "The great barge was fashioned for Enlil and Ninlil." 8th day — copy (gaba-ri).
Our translation engine — Opus 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(ban2) 6(disz) sila3 kasz du sa2-du11 szitim-e-ne u4 bad3 ba-du3-a giri3 e2-a-szar ki er3-ra-ba-ni-ta ba-zi sza3 gar-sza-an-na iti ki-siki nin-a-zu mu ma2-gur8-mah en-lil2 nin-lil2-ra mu-ne-dim2 u4 8(disz)-kam gaba-ri
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0478. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Amar-Suen y8 — The great barge for Enlil and Ninlil was fashioned based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-02-011 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323234). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.