Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0178
About this tablet
This is an Ur III-period labor-accounting tablet from Garšana, an administrative estate site in southern Iraq that supplied workers and goods to the crown. It tallies several gangs of male workers (gurusz) under named foremen, totaling nearly 300 individuals, assigned to earth-moving work connected to the garden or orchard of Zabala. The dated year formula places it in the reign of King Šu-Suen of the Third Dynasty of Ur, during the year he campaigned against the land of Zabšali — the kind of routine bureaucratic record that, multiplied by thousands of similar tablets, reveals how the Ur III state organized mass labor.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record tallies work crews assigned to an earth-moving job: 71 laborers under one foreman (name lost), 1 laborer named Me-e'a, 52 laborers under foreman Zala'a, and 171 and a half laborers under foreman Ibni-ilum. Together they excavated and hauled earth for the garden at Zabala. The job was checked off by an official inspection. The record is dated to the month of the Šu-Suen festival, in the year King Šu-Suen destroyed the land of Zabšali. The tablet breaks off after this, so whatever followed is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine71 workmen [...] 1 workman: Me-e'a 52 workmen, foreman: Zala'a 171 1/2 workmen, foreman: Ibni-ilum. Earth removed (excavated), carried/hauled — [in-la2, du5-la2, function uncertain] — (for) the garden of Zabala. Inspection performed. Month: 'Festival of Šu-Suen.' Year: 'The land of Zabšali was destroyed' [(by) Šu-Suen]. [...] (text breaks off)
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
1(gesz2) 1(u) 1(disz)# gurusz# [...] 1(disz) gurusz me-[e2-a] 5(u) 2(disz) gurusz ugula za-la-[a] 2(gesz2) 5(u) 1(disz) 1/2(disz) gurusz ugula ib-ni-dingir sahar zi-ga in-la2 du5-la2 kiri6 zabala4 gurum2 [ak] iti ezem-szu-suen mu ma-da za-[ab-sza]-li mu#-[hul] [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0178. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-02-021 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323244). 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.