Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0492
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative voucher from Garšana, a provincial estate-center in southern Mesopotamia known for its detailed records of craft and household supply. It records a modest disbursement — 2 sila of a soap-plant (naga, an alkaline plant used to make cleansing agents) — issued to the establishment of the palace or temple barbers. Such texts illustrate the granular bookkeeping of the Ur III bureaucracy, where even routine hygiene supplies for barbers were tracked by official, responsible commissioner, and dated by month and regnal year.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a receipt: two sila of a soap-plant (used for making cleaning agents) were issued to the barbers' workshop. The transaction was overseen by the official Baba-idab, acting as commissioner, and the material was drawn from the stock or account of Iškur-illat. The record is dated to the month of the Ninazu festival, in the year when the great ceremonial barge was caulked (Šu-Suen's second year).
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 sila3 of ...-naga(?) (soap-plant/alkali) — for the house of the barbers, via Baba-idab, the commissioner (maškim); from Iškur-illat it was withdrawn (ba-zi). Month: 'Festival of Ninazu.' Year: 'The great magur-boat was caulked.'
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
2(disz) sila3 x-x naga? e2 szu-i-e-ne-sze3 giri3-ba-ba6-i3-dab5 maszkim [ki] iszkur-illat-ta ba-zi iti ezem-nin-a-zu mu ma2-gur8-mah ba-ab-du8
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0492. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 50-03-032 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P324732). 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.