Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0420
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative voucher from Garšana, an estate-town near Puzriš-Dagan associated with the general Šu-Kabta and his wife Simat-Ištaran. It records the disbursement of a single grain-fed sheep, allotted as a gift to a builder or mason, with an official named Ea-šar overseeing the transaction and the sheep charged to Šu-Kabta's account. The year name, referring to the destruction of the land of Zabšali, dates the tablet to around the third regnal year of King Šu-Suen of Ur — a routine bit of livestock bookkeeping that happens to be pinned to a real military campaign.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One grain-fattened sheep was handed out on the 10th day of the month as a gift for a builder working on the estate. Ea-šar signed off on the transaction as the responsible official, and the sheep was charged against Šu-Kabta's accounts, drawn from the holdings of a man named Iškur-illat. The record is dated to the month of the Ninazu festival, in the year the land of Zabšali was destroyed — and this copy of the receipt was kept for the files.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sheep, grain-fed; month, day 10 having passed; (as) the gift-allotment for the builder(s); Ea-šar was the responsible official (maškim); expenditure (zi-ga) of Šu-Kabta; withdrawn (ba-zi) from Iškur-illat; month: 'festival of Ninazu'; year: 'the land of Zabšali was destroyed'; copy (gaba-ri).
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) udu [niga] iti u4 1(u) ba-zal [lu2 nig2-]ba-ba6 szitim e2-a-szar maszkim zi-ga szu-kab-ta2 ki iszkur-illat-ta ba-zi iti ezem-nin-a-zu mu ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul gaba-ri
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0420. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-06-017 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322606). 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.