Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0868
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from the estate archive at Garšana, dated to the year Zabšali was destroyed (a year-name of King Šu-Sin, roughly 2040s BCE). It records four sheep hides — byproducts of animals slaughtered for food — handed over by an official named Iškur-illat to a man named Ana-ah-ili, who is confirmed by a seal impression identifying him as Ana-hili, son of Saba, a leatherworker. Texts like this document the routine flow of raw materials (hides) from the household's meat rations into its craft workshops for tanning and leatherworking, part of the vast bureaucratic apparatus that managed the Garšana estate under the Ur III state.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records that four sheep hides — leftover from animals used for food rations — were issued by Iškur-illat and taken in by Ana-ah-ili. The transaction is dated to the month of the ki-siki festival of Ninazu, in the year that the land of Zabšali was destroyed. A seal stamped on the tablet identifies the recipient as Ana-hili, son of Saba, a leatherworker, confirming he was the craftsman who took the hides for processing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 hides of sheep, from consumption (rations) — from Iškur-illat; Ana-ah-ili received (them). Month: "ki-siki-Ninazu"; Year: "the land of Zabšali was destroyed." (seal inscription:) Ana-hili, son of Saba, leatherworker.
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
4(disz) kusz udu nig2-gu7-a ki iszkur-illat-ta a-na-ah-i3-li2 szu ba-ti iti ki-siki nin-a-zu [mu] ma-da za#-ab-[sza]-li# [mu]-hul a-na-hi-li2 dumu sa2-ba aszgab
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0868. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-09-150 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323675). 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.