Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0866
About this tablet
This is a small receipt tablet from the Ur III administrative archive at Garšana, an estate that supplied labor, animals, and goods to the Ur III state around 2000 BCE. It records that a man named Anah-ili received three hides of grain-fed sheep from Iškur-illat, with the transaction dated by month and by the year-name commemorating the destruction of the land of Zabšali (a campaign of King Šu-Sin). The tablet closes with a seal legend naming Šu-Kabta, a physician, and identifying the scribe Iškur-illat as his servant — a routine but vivid glimpse of the bureaucratic machinery, complete with livestock accounting and personal seals, that ran a Mesopotamian estate four thousand years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Anah-ili received three hides from grain-fed sheep, issued by Iškur-illat. The transaction was recorded in the month of ki-siki-Ninazu, in the year that the land of Zabšali was destroyed. The document bears a seal identifying Šu-Kabta the physician, son of Naram-ili, and naming Iškur-illat the scribe, son of Abiya, as his servant — the scribe who authenticated the record on Šu-Kabta's behalf.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 hides of grain-fed sheep, from Iškur-illat, Anah-ili received. Month: "ki-siki-Ninazu" (month 11), Year: "the land of Zabšali was destroyed." (Seal:) Šu-Kabta, the physician, son of Naram-ili; Iškur-illat, scribe, son of Abiya, 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
3(disz) kusz udu niga ki iszkur-illat-ta a-na-ah-i3-li2 szu ba-an-ti iti ki-siki nin-a-zu 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, 0866. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-06-036 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322625). 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.