Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0908
About this tablet
A small receipt from Garšana, a settlement in southern Iraq run in the late 21st century BCE by the general Šu-Kabta and the royal princess Simat-Ištaran. A leatherworker named Anah-ilī takes delivery of four animal skins — three sheep, one goat — from a man called Iškur-illat, and the transaction is dated to the akītu-festival month of the year in which King Šu-Sîn had a great processional barge built for the gods Enlil and Ninlil. The last two lines identify the recipient by trade and father's name, the ancient equivalent of a signature line. Thousands of such slips survive from Garšana, and together they document a working craft economy in extraordinary detail.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Received: three sheepskins and one goatskin, handed over by Iškur-illat. Taken by Anah-ilī in the month of the akītu festival, in the year the great barge was built for Enlil and Ninlil. Signed: Annah-ilī, leatherworker, son of Saba.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 sheep hides, 1 goat hide, from Iškur-illat, Anah-ilī has received. Month: akiti (Festival of the Akītu). [Year:] "the great barge for Enlil and Ninlil he fashioned." (caption/label:) Annah-ilī, leatherworker, son of Saba.
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
3(disz) kusz udu 1(disz) kusz masz2 ki iszkur-illat-ta a-na-ah-i3-li2 szu ba-ti iti# a2-ki-ti [mu] ma2-gur8-mah en-lil2 nin-lil2-ra mu-ne-dim2 an-na-ah-i3-li2 aszgab dumu sa2-ba
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0908. 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 48-04-025 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322538). 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.