Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0090
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative memo from the estate of Garšana, a provincial center known for its large labor-management archive. It records two groups of male builders (šitim) — one drawn from a category called 'men of the gift-allotment' and another belonging to the household of a man or place called A — and tracks that six of these workers were assigned to a task connected to a person named Elunumne-Erigal, possibly involving bread or baking. The entry closes with a standard bureaucratic formula: an inspection was carried out under the authority of the official Iškur-illat, dated to the 16th day of a named month in the year King Šu-Suen destroyed the land of Zabšali (his seventh regnal year, c. 2043 BCE).
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet logs labor accounting from the Garšana estate. Three builders belong to a group called 'men of the gift-allotment,' and three more builders are listed as servants of the house of A — six workers in total. Of these, six builders were assigned on a certain day to a task associated with a person named Elunumne-Erigal, apparently involving bread or baking, though the exact wording is damaged. The total of six workers is recorded as the formal expenditure for this assignment. An inspection was carried out, processed through the official Iškur-illat, the household manager. The record is dated to the 16th day of the month Ubibigu, in the year King Šu-Suen destroyed the land of Zabšali.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 male builders (šitim), men of the gift-allotment (lu2 nig2-ba), 3 male builders, servants of the house of A, 6 (total), therefrom: 6 male builders, when Elunumne-Erigal(?) [bread?] to bake(?), 6 (total), is the booked-out expenditure. Inspection performed, via Iškur-illat, the household manager (šabra). Month: "Ubibigu" (u5-bi2-gu7), year: "the land of Zabšali was destroyed," the 16th day.
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 3(disz) gurusz szitim ARAD2 e2-A 6(disz) sza3-bi-ta 6(disz) gurusz szitim u4 e-lu-num2-ne3-[eri11]-gal# [ninda?] du8-[de3?] 6(disz) [zi]-ga-am3 gurum2# ak giri3 iszkur-illat szabra iti# u5-bi2-gu7 mu ma-da za-ab-sza#-li mu-hul# u4 1(u) 6(disz)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0090. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-04-069 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322580). 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.