Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0897
About this tablet
A small Ur III disbursement receipt from Garšana, a private estate town in southern Iraq run by the general Šu-Kabta and his wife Simat-Ištaran, dated to about 2030 BCE. It records two leather bags and one pair of ordinary shoes released from the stores of an official named Anah-ili, dated by the year in which a great processional barge was built for the gods Enlil and Ninlil at Nippur. The tablet was sealed by the scribe Iškur-illat, son of Abi'a, whose seal identifies him as the servant of Šu-Kabta, son of Naram-ili — the same Šu-Kabta who dominates the Garšana archive, here given the title 'physician' rather than his more usual 'general.'
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two dried leather bags of the ti-bala type and one pair of ordinary shoes were issued from Anah-ili's stock. The transaction was entered in the month of U₅-bi₂-gu₇, in the year the great barge was built for Enlil and Ninlil. The receipt carries the seal of Iškur-illat the scribe, son of Abi'a, who serves Šu-Kabta the physician, son of Naram-ili.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 leather bag(s) (du₁₀-[gan]), ti-bala type, dried; 1 pair (é-ba-an) of shoes (e-sir₂), ordinary quality; from Anah-ili booked out (ba-zi). Month: U₅-bi₂-gu₇. Year: "The great barge was fashioned for Enlil and Ninlil." (Seal:) Šu-Kabta, the physician (a-zu), son of Naram-ili: Iškur-illat, the scribe, son of Abi'a, is your servant.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(disz) du10-[gan] ti-bala had2 1(disz) e-sir2 du e2-ba-an ki a-na-ah-i3-li2-ta ba-zi iti u5-bi2-gu7 mu ma2-gur8-mah en-lil2 nin-lil2-ra mu-ne-dim2 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, 0897. 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 49-02-002 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323225). 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.