Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0171
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III labor-account tablet from the estate archive at Garšana, a provincial administrative center in southern Iraq around 2000 BCE. It records crews of male and female workers — some of them explicitly hired laborers — assigned under named foremen to the task of grinding malt, likely for beer production, with an official inspection noted to verify the work. The date formula ties it to the reign of King Šulgi of Ur, in the year his forces destroyed the land of Zabšali, giving the tablet a precise place in Mesopotamia's Third Dynasty of Ur bureaucracy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet logs work crews at the Garšana estate: three men under foreman Šu-Dumuzi, three women under foreman Zala'a (identified as hired hands), and three more men under foreman Beli-ili. The text breaks off, and then resumes noting that the crews were assigned to grind malt, with an inspection carried out to confirm the labor. It's dated to the month of the Šulgi festival, in the year King Šulgi destroyed the land of Zabšali — a standard bureaucratic dating formula from the Ur III period.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 male laborers, foreman: Šu-Dumuzi. 3 female laborers, foreman: Zala'a. They are hired workers. 3 male laborers, foreman: Beli-ili. [...] (break) to grind malt. Inspection performed. Month: "Festival of Šulgi." Year: "The land of Zabšali was destroyed."
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 ugula szu-dumu-zi 3(disz) geme2 ugula za#-[la]-a lu2 hun-ga2-[me-esz2] 3(disz) gurusz ugula be-li2-i3-[li2] [...] munu4 nag4-ga2-de3# gurum2 ak iti ezem-szul-gi mu ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0171. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-02-012 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323235). 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.