Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0401
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative voucher from the estate of Garšana, part of a large corpus of household accounts belonging to the family of the general Šu-Kabta and his wife Simat-Ištaran, who managed royal lands under king Šu-Suen. It records a quantity of beer issued to a work crew of builders (masons) to drink, charged against the account of a man named Ili-uznani, and processed through two officials — a chief steward and a scribe. Texts like this survive by the hundreds from Garšana and let historians reconstruct, almost day by day, how food and drink rations kept construction crews working on Ur III public building projects.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A quantity of beer — the amount and quality are lost where the tablet is broken — was issued to a crew of builders, who drank it. The cost was charged against Ili-uznani's account and formally written off as an expenditure. The transaction was handled by Iškur-illat, the chief steward, and recorded by the scribe Puzur-Ninkar, at the estate of Garšana. It is dated to the month of Akiti in a year named for King Šu-Suen, though the rest of the year name is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n (units of) beer, du(-quality/delivered)], for the builders, they drank. From Ili-uznani it was withdrawn (booked as expenditure). Via Iškur-illat, the chief steward, and Puzur-Ninkar, the scribe, in Garšana. Month: Akiti. Year: Šu-Suen [...].
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
[n kasz du] szitim-e-ne ib2-nag ki i3-li2-uz-ra-ni-ta ba-zi giri3 iszkur-illat szabra u3 puzur4-nin-kar-ke3 dub-sar sza3 gar-sza-an-na iti a2-ki-ti [mu] szu-[suen ...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0401. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-06-032 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322621). 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.