Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0222
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative docket from the estate of Garšana, part of the large corpus of labor-management texts kept by the household of the military governor Šu-Kabta and his wife Simat-Ištaran. It records the temporary assignment of a single male worker — identified as a 'fuller' (a cloth-washer/finisher) — for a 25-day stretch, seconded from the authority of a royal messenger named Na-silim to accompany or fetch another individual. The entry closes with the standard 'booked out' (zi-ga) disbursement formula naming Šu-Kabta as the responsible official, the everyday bookkeeping language of a busy provincial estate that tracked exactly how many days its laborers spent on which tasks.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One male worker, a fuller by trade, was assigned for 25 days. He came from Na-silim, the king's messenger, and was sent to fetch or escort a man; he went along with him. The labor is recorded as a disbursement processed through Šu-Kabta. It came from [a source whose name is broken off], and the rest of the tablet — a few more lines — is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 male worker, a fuller, for 25 days — from Na-silim, the king's messenger, to fetch/escort the man, he went along (with him). Booked out (disbursement), via Šu-Kabta, from [...] — [...]...... ...... [...]-EN-[...] [...] ......
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(disz) gurusz lu2 azlag2 u4 2(u) 5(disz)-sze3 na-silim lu2 kin-gi4 lugal-ta lu2 te-te-de3 in-da-ge26-en zi-ga giri3 szu-kab-ta2 ki [...]-ta [...]-x x [...]-EN-[...] [...] x x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0222. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 52-04-065 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P325891). 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.