Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0421
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative tablet from the estate archive at Garšana, recording an outlay of livestock — sheep, a milk-fed kid, and a black pig — issued from the custody of an official named Ili-bilani, apparently for ritual or craft purposes and for a woman named Ummi-Kabta. The document is dated by a year-name referring to the Ur III king Šu-Suen's destruction of the land of Zabšali, anchoring it firmly in the late 21st century BCE. The names at the end — a cook, a physician, and a scribe, several identified as servants of the general Šu-Kabta — are typical of the seal captions that authenticated such disbursement records at Garšana, a provincial administrative center supplying the Ur III state's military and religious households.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The livestock office issued 3 sheep and 1 milk-fed kid, a black pig set aside for statue-work (or a craftsman called KID2-ALAN), and 2 grass-fed sheep. These were charged out of the account of Ili-bilani for Ummi-Kabta, daughter of the household. The transaction is dated to the month of the Ninazu festival, in the year Zabšali was destroyed. The document carries the seals of three men: Adalal the cook, a servant of Šu-Kabta; Šu-Kabta the physician, son of Naram-ili; and Iškur-illat the scribe, son of Abiya, described as 'your servant.'
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 sheep, 1 milk-fed kid, a black pig — for the KID2-ALAN (statue-work/craftsman), 2 grass-fed sheep, (for) Ummi-Kabta, daughter of the household, from Ili-bilani, disbursed (booked out). Month: "Festival of Ninazu." Year: "the land of Zabšali was destroyed." Adalal, the cook, servant of Šu-Kabta. Šu-Kabta, the physician, son of Naram-ili. Iškur-illat, the scribe, son of Abiya, your servant.
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
3(disz) udu 1(disz) masz2 ga szah2-ge6 KID2-ALAN 2(disz) udu u2 um-mi-kab-ta2 dumu-munus e2-a ki# i3-li2-bi-la-ni-ta ba-zi iti ezem-nin-a-zu mu ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul a-da-lal3 muhaldim ARAD2 szu-kab-ta2 szu-kab2-ta a-zu dumu na-ra-am-i3-li2 iszkur-illat dub-sar dumu a-bi2-a ARAD2-zu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0421. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-02-004 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322406). 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.