Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0232
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III labor-accounting tablet from Garšana, a provincial estate administrative center in southern Iraq around 2000 BCE. It records the assignment of a leatherworker, a feltworker, and a smith for a single day's work handling a shipment of reed and fresh reed brought from the temple household of the god Šara to Garšana. Such texts are part of a huge bureaucratic archive tracking craft labor, materials, and the officials (here Beli-ili and Iškur-illat) responsible for moving goods between institutions — everyday paperwork of a highly centralized redistributive economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
On this day, skilled workers were assigned as follows: one and two-thirds leatherworkers, one feltworker, and one smith — all for one day's labor. The task involved reed and fresh reed material that had been brought from the temple household of Šara to the town of Garšana; the delivery is noted twice, confirming it arrived. The transaction was handled through the official Beli-ili, drawn from the account of Iškur-illat, and the materials/labor were formally disbursed. The record is dated to the month called 'Piglet-Feast,' in the year that the land of Zabšali was destroyed (a Šu-Suen era date).
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 2/3 workmen (labor-days): leatherworkers; 1 workman: feltworker; 1 workman: smith; for 1 day — reed and fresh (gizi-)reed, from the house of Šara, brought to Garšana — brought. Via Beli-ili; from (the account of) Iškur-illat, it was disbursed (ba-zi). Month: Sesdagu ("eating of piglets"), 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.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
1(disz) 2/3(disz) gurusz aszgab 1(disz) gurusz tug2-du8 1(disz) gurusz simug u4 1(disz)-sze3 gi# u3 gi-zi e2 szara2-ta gar-sza-an-na-sze3 [de6]-a de6-a! giri3 be-li2-i3-li2 ki iszkur-illat-ta ba-zi iti ses-da-gu7 mu ma-da [za-ab]-sza-li mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0232. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-09-145 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323670). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.