Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0901
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from the estate of Garšana in southern Mesopotamia, roughly 2100–2000 BCE. It records that a single pig hide was handed over from a man named Iškur-illat to a leatherworker named Anaḫ-ili, who is identified in a closing line as the son of a man called Saba. Texts like this are the everyday paper trail of a large agricultural and craft-production household — here tracking raw material moving into the hands of a tanner or leather craftsman for processing into goods like straps, harness, or footwear.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A record of one pig hide handed over by a man named Iškur-illat to the leatherworker Anaḫ-ili, who acknowledged receiving it. The transaction is dated to the month called "ki-siki-Ninazu," in the year known by the formula "the great magur-boat was caulked." A closing note identifies the leatherworker again by name and gives his father's name, Saba — standard practice for pinning down exactly who received the goods in these estate accounts.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 pig hide (skin), from Iškur-illat, Anaḫ-ili received. Month: "ki-siki-Ninazu" (month 11), Year: "The great magur-boat was caulked." Anaḫ-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.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
1(disz) kusz szah2 ki iszkur-illat-ta a-na-ah-i3-li2 szu [ba-an-ti] iti ki-siki nin-a-zu mu ma2-[gur8]-mah ba-ab-du8 an-na-ah-i3-li2 aszgab dumu sa2-ba
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0901. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-04-022 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322536). 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.