Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0450
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III bookkeeping tablet from the estate of Garšana, a provincial administrative center in southern Iraq around 2000 BCE tied to the household of the official Šu-Kabta. It records the withdrawal of a single sheep from stock held by one Ili-bilani, credited to Puzur-Ninkar, dated by month and by a royal year-name commemorating a military campaign against the land of Zabšali. The tablet carries a seal impression naming the scribe Iškur-illat as servant of Šu-Kabta — the kind of routine paperwork that let a large estate track its livestock animal by animal.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One sheep was taken out of the flock that had been in Ili-bilani's keeping; the transaction was handled by Puzur-Ninkar. It happened in the month of the Great Festival, in the year that the land of Zabšali was destroyed (a year-name referring to a royal military campaign). The document is sealed by Iškur-illat the scribe, son of Abi'a, who identifies himself as the servant of Šu-Kabta — apparently called 'the physician' here — son of Naram-ili.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sheep — by Puzur-Ninkar, from Ili-bilani, was withdrawn (booked out). Month: "Great Festival" (ezem-maḫ). Year: "the land of Zabšali was destroyed." (Seal:) Šu-Kabta, physician(?), son of Naram-ili; Iškur-illat, scribe, son of Abi'a, is 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
1(disz) udu# puzur4-nin#-kar-ke3 ki i3-li2-[bi]-la#-ni#-[ta] ba-zi iti ezem-mah mu ma-da za-[ab]-sza-li mu-hul# 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, 0450. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-02-006 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322408). 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.