Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0881
About this tablet
This is a small receipt tablet from the Ur III administrative center of Garšana (early 21st century BCE), recording the transfer of raw hide materials — an ox-hide, two ox-horns, and a hide from an ox's tail — from a man named Iškur-illat to Anah-ili, a professional leatherworker. Such texts are part of the vast bureaucratic record-keeping of the Ur III state, which tracked even small quantities of raw materials moving through workshops. The year formula dates the tablet to the year King Šu-Suen conducted his campaign that destroyed the land of Zabšali, giving it a precise place in Mesopotamian chronology.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records that Anah-ili, a leatherworker and son of Saba, took delivery of some raw hide materials from a man called Iškur-illat: one ox-hide, two ox-horns, and one hide from an ox's tail. The transaction is dated to the month of Šu-eš'a, in the year that king Šu-Suen destroyed the land of Zabšali — a standard way Ur III scribes dated documents, by naming a notable event of that year. It's a routine workshop supply receipt, the kind of small paperwork trail generated constantly by the Ur III state's centralized craft economy.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ox-hide, 2 ox-horns, 1 hide of the ox-tail — from Iškur-illat, Anah-ili received. Month: Šu-eš'a, year: "The land of Zabšali was destroyed." (Sealed by:) Anah-ili, the leatherworker, 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
1(disz) kusz gu4 2(disz) si-gu4 1(disz) kusz-kun!-gu4 ki iszkur-illat-ta a-na-ah-i3-li2 szu ba-an-ti iti szu-esz-sza 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, 0881. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-15-077 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P324083). 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.