Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1154
About this tablet
A small livestock receipt from Garšana, a private estate town in southern Iraq run by the general-physician Šu-Kabta and his wife Simat-Ištaran, dated to the reign of Šu-Sin (c. 2030 BCE). On the fifteenth day of the eleventh month, an official named Ili-bilani took charge of fifteen animals — fat-tailed sheep, lambs, and goats — handed over by Iškur-illat, and sealed the tablet with his own seal naming him as Šu-Kabta's servant. Documents like this one, excavated illicitly and now at Cornell, form part of one of the best-preserved private household archives from ancient Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Livestock transfer, day 15 of the month of Maš-da-gu: one fat-tailed sheep, three ewes, four fat-tailed male lambs, two fat-tailed female lambs, two mature billy-goats, and three nanny-goats. Iškur-illat handed the animals over; Ili-bilani accepted responsibility for them. Dated to the year the great ceremonial barge was built for the gods Enlil and Ninlil. Sealed by Ili-bilani, servant of Šu-Kabta.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 fat-tailed sheep, 3 ewes(?) |U8+ḪUL2|, 4 fat-tailed male lambs, 2 fat-tailed female lambs, 2 full-grown billy-goats, 3 nanny-goats: the month having elapsed to the 15th day; from Iškur-illat Ili-bilani took (them) in charge. Month: Maš-da-gu ("gazelle-eating"). Year: "The great barge for Enlil and Ninlil was fashioned." (Seal:) Ili-bilani, servant of Šu-Kabta.
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
1(disz) gukkal 3(disz) |U8+HUL2|? 4(disz) sila4 gukkal 2(disz) kir11 gukkal 2(disz) masz2-gal 3(disz) ud5 iti u4 1(u) 5(disz) ba-zal ki iszkur-illat-ta i3-li2-bi-la-ni i3#-dab5 iti masz2-da3-gu7 mu ma2-gur8-mah en-lil2 nin-lil2-ra mu-ne-dim2 i3-li2-bi-la-ni ARAD2 szu-kab-ta
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1154. 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 48-02-022 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322424). 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.