Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0556
About this tablet
This is a ration or provisioning account from Garšana, one of the estate archives of the Ur III state (c. 2100–2000 BCE) that supplied food to laborers, overseers, scribes, and craftsmen. Each line lists a category of worker — hired men, hired women, supervisors, scribes, a smith, a worker of uncertain title, and porters — along with fixed daily or per-task allotments of beer, bread, and soup. Texts like this let historians reconstruct the scale, hierarchy, and daily logistics of a large Mesopotamian labor estate, down to exactly how much food a scribe received compared to a porter.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The beginning of the tablet is too damaged to read. What survives is a ration list: 15 hired male laborers each get 1 sila3 of beer plus bread and about 2/3 sila3 of soup; 30 hired female laborers each get 2/3 sila3 beer, bread, and 1/3 sila3 soup; 3 overseers of the hired workers get 2 sila3 beer, bread, and 1/2 sila3 soup each; 3 scribes get the same as the overseers, while 2 other scribes get a smaller share (1 sila3 beer, bread, 1/3 sila3 soup); a single smith gets 1 sila3 beer, bread, and 1/3 sila3 soup; one worker in an unclear role gets the same; a woman in another unclear role gets 2/3 sila3 beer, bread, and roughly 1/3 sila3 soup; and 5 porters each get 2/3 sila3 beer, bread, and 1/3 sila3 soup. The tablet ends with a broken summary line and further illegible text.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] ... [...] [...] AN-[...] (broken) 15 hired male workers (gurush hunga): 1 sila3 beer, bread, 2/3 sila3 soup(?) each. 30 hired female workers (geme2 hunga): 2/3 sila3 beer, bread, 1/3 sila3 soup(?) each. 3 men, overseers of the hired workers (ugula lu2 hunga): 2 sila3 beer, bread, 1/2 sila3 soup(?) each. 3 men, scribes: 2 sila3 beer, bread, 1/2 sila3 soup(?) each. 2 men, scribes: 1 sila3 beer, bread, 1/3 sila3 soup(?) each. 1 man, smith: 1 sila3 beer, bread, 1/3 sila3 soup(?). 1 man, SIG7(?) (occupation uncertain): 1 sila3 beer, bread, 1/3 sila3 soup(?). 1 woman, ...-nesag(?): 2/3 sila3 beer, bread, 1/3(?) sila3 soup(?). 5 men, porters (ug3-il2): 2/3 sila3 beer, bread, 1/3 sila3 soup(?) each. [...] its (total?) [...] ... [...]
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
[...] x-x [...] [...] AN-[...] 1(u) 5(disz) gurusz hun-ga2 1(disz) sila3 kasz ninda 2/3(disz) sila3 tu7?-ta 3(u) geme2 hun-ga2 2/3(disz) sila3 kasz ninda# 1/3(disz) sila3 tu7?-[ta] 3(disz) gurusz ugula lu2 hun-ga2 2(disz) sila3 kasz# ninda# 1/2(disz) sila3 tu7?-ta# 3(disz) gurusz dub-sar 2(disz) sila3 kasz ninda 1/2(disz) sila3 tu7?-ta 2(disz) gurusz dub-sar 1(disz) sila3 kasz ninda 1/3(disz) sila3 tu7?-ta 1(disz) gurusz simug 1(disz) [sila3] kasz# ninda 1/3(disz) sila3# tu7? 1(disz) gurusz SIG7? 1(disz) sila3 kasz ninda 1/3(disz) sila3 tu7? 1(disz) geme2 x-nesag? 2/3(disz) sila3 kasz ninda 1/3(disz)? sila3 tu7? 5(disz) gurusz ug3-IL2 2/3(disz) sila3 kasz ninda 1/3(disz) sila3 tu7?-ta [...]-bi [...] x [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0556. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-09-011 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322923). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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.