Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0089
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III labor-accounting tablet from Garšana, one of the many administrative estates that supplied and managed construction crews for the Ur III state around the reign of Šulgi. It tracks a work gang of six builders — three assigned as a temporary 'gift' loan of laborers, three under the supervision of a man named Warad-Ea — and records how they were parceled out to specific brickwork and leveling tasks, closing with a formal inspection and the name of the overseeing household manager. Tablets like this let historians reconstruct the granular, day-by-day logistics of state building projects nearly 4,000 years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet logs a crew of six construction workers at Garšana. Three were on loan as a special allotment; the other three worked under the man Warad-Ea. Of the six, one was put to work molding bricks, another worked with bricks in some capacity, and four more were assigned to leveling or scraping ground at a building called Eki-bagara, associated with a person or place named Ubarria. The entry is logged as an official expenditure of labor, confirmed by an inspection, and processed through the household manager Iškur-illat. It's dated to day 5 of the month 'u5-bi2-gu7,' in the year that the land of Zabšali was destroyed (a year-name from Šulgi's reign).
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 male builders — men of the gift-allotment (nig2-ba); 3 male builders — (under) Warad-Ea; From among them: 1 male builder, stationed at brick-[...]-molding(?); 1 male worker (ma-šub-ba worker), stationed at bricks [...]; 4 male builders [...], stationed doing leveling/scraping work at the house Eki-bagara (of) Ubarria; It is a booked-out expenditure. Inspection performed. Via Iškur-illat, the household manager (šabra). Month: "u5-bi2-gu7." Year: "the land of Zabšali was destroyed." Day 5.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
3(disz) gurusz szitim lu2 nig2-ba-ba6 szitim 3(disz) gurusz szitim ARAD2 e2-A [sza3]-bi-ta 1(disz) gurusz szitim [sig4] al#-urx(BAHAR2)?-ra gub-ba 1(disz) gurusz ma-szub-ba sig4# [gub-ba] 4(disz) gurusz szitim [...] e2-ki-ba-gar-ra u-bar-ri-a da6-da6 gub-ba zi-ga-am3 gurum2 ak giri3 iszkur-illat szabra iti u5-bi2-gu7 mu ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-[hul] u4 5(disz)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0089. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-08-008 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322819). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.