Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0916
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Garšana, an estate-town in southern Iraq that supplied the royal household during the reign of the Ur III kings Amar-Suen and Šu-Suen. It records a modest disbursement of animal hides — two sheep hides and two goat hides — handed over by one official, Iškur-illat, and received by another, Iškur-saga, with the transaction dated by month and year name. The closing lines are a seal caption naming Šu-Kabta, a well-documented figure at Garšana (here titled 'physician'), and his scribe Šarrum-bani, whose seal authenticated the tablet — a tiny but vivid glimpse of the bureaucratic machinery behind a 4,000-year-old estate.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two sheep hides and two goat hides were handed over by Iškur-illat and received by Iškur-saga. The transaction is dated to the month of the Šu-Suen festival, in the year 'the great magur-boat was built.' The tablet's seal identifies Šu-Kabta, a physician and son of Naram-ili, as the authority behind the document, with his scribe Šarrum-bani standing as his servant and sealer.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 sheep hides, 2 goat hides, from Iškur-illat — Iškur-saga received. Month: 'Festival of Šu-Suen.' Year: 'The great magur-boat was built.' (Seal:) Šu-Kabta, physician, son of Naram-ili; Šarrum-bani, scribe, is his servant.
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
2(disz) kusz udu# 2(disz) kusz# masz2# ki []iszkur#-illat-ta iszkur-saga szu ba-ti iti ezem-szu-suen mu ma2-gur8-mah ba-dim2 szu-[kab-ta] a-[zu] dumu na-ra-am-i3-[li2] szar-ru-um-ba-[ni] dub-sar ARAD2-[zu]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0916. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-02-012 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322414). 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.