Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0486
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Garšana, a provincial estate that supplied a nearby military and agricultural establishment. It records a modest disbursement of barley (1 ban2, roughly 10 liters) to a woman named Nin-lulu, verified by the official Abu-du acting as commissioner (maškim). Abu-du is identified as a servant of Šu-Kabta, a well-attested military governor at Garšana, which situates this humble grain voucher within the household administration of one of the best-documented Ur III officials.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a receipt: ten liters of barley were issued to a woman named Nin-lulu. Abu-du, acting as the supervising official, signed off on the disbursement. It happened during the month of the Ninazu festival, in the year when the great magur-boat was caulked. The record closes by noting that Abu-du worked for Šu-Kabta. One line near the end is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ban2 barley, for Nin-lulu; Abu-du, the commissioner (maškim); booked out (ba-zi). Month: "Festival of Ninazu"; year: "The great magur-boat was caulked." Abu-du, [...], servant of Šu-Kabta.
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(ban2) sze nin-lu-lu a-bu-du10 maszkim ba-[zi] iti ezem-nin-a-zu mu ma2-gur8-mah ba-ab-du8 a-bu-du10 x ARAD2 szu-kab-ta2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0486. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-02-024 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322426). 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.