Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0867
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Garšana, a provincial estate that supplied labor and goods to the Ur III state around 2000 BCE. It records a delivery of animal hides — mostly sheepskins, some for a regular offering allotment — handed over by an official named Iškur-illat and received by a man named Anah-ili. The year formula dates it to the year King Šulgi's forces destroyed the land of Zabšali, anchoring this humble leather transaction to a known royal military campaign.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a receipt for hides: one unidentified hide, one sheep hide, two more unidentified hides, a sheep hide that was booked out of stock, two more sheep hides, and a sheep hide set aside for the regular offerings. Iškur-illat issued these hides, and Anah-ili acknowledged receiving them. The transaction is dated to the month of Ninazu's festival, in the year King Šulgi's army destroyed the land of Zabšali.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 hide of [...] 1 sheep hide 2 hides of [...] sheep hide, booked out (zi-ga) 2 sheep hides sheep hide, for regular offerings (sa2-du11) from Iškur-illat Anah-ili received. Month: 'ki-siki of Ninazu' Year: 'the land of Zabšali was destroyed'
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
1(disz) kusz-[x] 1(disz) kusz udu# 2(disz) kusz [x] kusz udu zi-[ga] 2(disz) kusz udu kusz udu sa2-du11 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
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0867. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-02-010 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323233). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.