Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0216
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative memo from Garšana, a Sumerian estate-settlement (near Umma/Puzriš-Dagan) that functioned as an agricultural and craft-production center supplying the royal court around 2100–2000 BCE. It records quantities of grain (measured in ban2 and barig, standard dry-capacity units) apparently earmarked as malt for grinding, verified by a formal inspection (gurum2 ak), and processed under the authority of a named household administrator and scribe. Thousands of such receipts survive from Garšana's archive, giving historians an extraordinarily granular view of how a Mesopotamian agro-industrial estate tracked its raw materials day by day.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This receipt logs small measured amounts of grain — 2 ban2 of something, 4 barig of something else, and 2 ban2 of a third item whose label is broken away — set aside as malt for grinding (the rest of that entry is lost). The goods were checked and verified through an official inspection. The transaction was handled by Iškur-illat, the estate's household administrator, together with Puzur-Ninkar the scribe, at Garšana. It is dated to the month of Šu-eš-ša; the year name is broken away, and the tablet closes with a day number (also broken) and a note marking it as a copy of another document.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 ban2 [of ...] 4 barig [of ...] 2 ban2 ME-[...] malt, for grinding [...] Inspection performed. Via Iškur-illat, [the household administrator (šabra)], and Puzur-Ninkar, the scribe. In Garšana. Month: "Šu-eš-ša." [Year: ...] Day [n], copy.
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
2(ban2) [...] 4(barig) [...] 2(ban2) ME-[...] munu4 nag4-[ga2-de3 ...] gurum2 ak giri3 iszkur-[illat szabra] u3 puzur4-[nin]-kar-ke3 dub-[sar] sza3 gar-sza#-[an-na] iti szu-[esz-sza] [mu ...] u4 [n]-kam gaba#-ri#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0216. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-02-025 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323248). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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.