Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0878
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Garšana, a provincial estate center in southern Mesopotamia that supplied the royal household and military. It records a modest disbursement of lard — 2 sila (about 2 liters) — issued for use in leatherworking, handed over by an official named Iškur-illat to a craftsman named Ana-ah-ili. The tablet's colophon identifies the recipient by trade (leatherworker) and lineage (son of Saba), and the year-name dates the transaction to the reign of King Šu-Suen, in the year his land destroyed Zabšali — one of many such workaday receipts that let modern historians reconstruct the bureaucratic machinery of the Ur III state.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two sila of lard were issued for treating leather. The lard came from Iškur-illat and was received by Ana-ah-ili. Dated to the month of the Šu-Suen festival, in the year the land of Zabšali was destroyed. Note: Ana-ah-ili is a leatherworker, son of Saba.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 sila3 lard (i3-šah2) — for leather (mu kuš-še3), from Iškur-illat, Ana-ah-ili received. Month: 'Festival of Šu-Suen,' year: 'The land of Zabšali was destroyed.' (Colophon:) Ana-ah-ili, the leatherworker (ašgab), son of Saba.
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 i3-szah2 mu kusz-sze3 ki iszkur-illat-ta a-na-ah-i3-li2 szu ba-an-ti [iti] ezem-szu-suen mu ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul an-na-ah-i3-li2 aszgab dumu sa2-ba
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0878. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-04-019 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322533). 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.