Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0487
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from the estate archive at Garšana, a provincial center supplying the Ur III state under King Shulgi and his successors. It records rations or supplies — measured amounts of bread, flour, and fine flour — issued to the leatherworkers' workshop, with the transaction routed through the scribe Ea-šar and charged against the account of an official named Iškur-illat. The Garšana archive is famous among Assyriologists for its unusually detailed record of a single Ur III estate's labor and craft economy, and tablets like this one show exactly how raw and processed foodstuffs moved to support attached craft workers such as leatherworkers.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This receipt logs a series of small food disbursements: 1 ban2 and 2 sila3 of an unspecified item, and 5 sila3 of fine bread made from dabin-flour, both issued to the leatherworkers' workshop — apparently allotted there and purchased(?) for that purpose. A further 1 ban2 of fine flour went out under the name of Šat-ilī. The text breaks, then resumes with another small amount, 2 sila3 of an unnamed item, processed through the scribe Ea-šar and charged out from the account of Iškur-illat. The record is dated to the month of the Ninazu festival, in the year 'the great barge was built,' and is marked as a copy of the original document.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ban2 2 sila3 [of ...] 5 sila3 of fine bread (of) dabin-flour, for the leatherworkers, their workshop — placed/allotted (there), purchased(?) ... 1 ban2 of fine flour (esza), for/in the name of Šat-ilī. [...gap...] 2 sila3 of [...], via Ea-šar, the scribe, from Iškur-illat it was disbursed. Month: 'Festival of Ninazu.' Year: 'The great barge was built.' Copy.
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) 2(disz) sila3 [...] 5(disz) sila3 ninda sal-la dabin aszgab e2-ne-ne ki#-ba-gar-ra sa10-a?-[(x)] 1(ban2) esza# mu# [sza]-at-dingir-[sze3] [...] 2(disz) sila3 [...] giri3 e2-a-szar [dub-sar] ki iszkur#-illat#-[ta] ba-[zi] [iti] ezem-nin-a-zu [mu] ma2-gur8-mah ba-du3! gaba#-ri#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0487. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-06-033 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322622). 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.