Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0360
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III-period administrative tablet from Garšana, an estate center in southern Mesopotamia that produced hundreds of similar bookkeeping texts for royal and institutional workshops. It records a quantity of bricks (over 113 sar and 16 shekels by volume) whose consumption had not yet been formally deducted from the account books — a routine note in ancient inventory control. The tablet is dated by month and by the year-name commemorating the construction of a great ceremonial barge, corresponding to the reign of king Amar-Suen of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and names the official Ea-šar as responsible party ('via' in the accounting formula).
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This account records 113 sar and 16 shekels of bricks. A note clarifies that this amount has not yet been subtracted from the ledger — it's still pending in the books. The next two lines are too damaged to read clearly, though one seems to reference a place or person's name ending in '-ir,' marked as a second instance, and another simply trails off. The transaction was handled through the official Ea-šar. It's dated to the month of Akiti, in the year the great ceremonial barge was built — a year-name placing this record in the reign of Amar-Suen.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(geš2) 53 sar 16 shekels of bricks — its consumption (disbursement) has not been booked out (deducted from the account). [...]-ir(?), 2nd (occurrence) [...]-da via (the official) Ea-šar. Month: Akiti. Year: 'The great barge (magur-boat) was built.'
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) 5(u) 3(disz) sar 1(u) 6(disz) gin2 sig4 bi2-gu7-bi nu-zi [...]-ir? 2(disz)-kam [x]-da giri3 e2-a-szar iti a2-ki-ti mu [ma2]-gur8#-mah [ba]-dim2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0360. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-15-591 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P324597). 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.