Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0965
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from the estate archive at Garšana, recording the withdrawal (ba-zi) of a quantity of leather or hide goods from the account of a man named Ana-ah-ili, dated by a now-broken month and year name. Below the transaction, the tablet carries a seal inscription naming Šu-Kabta — the well-known administrator of the Garšana estate — and identifying Iškur-illat, a scribe and son of Abi'a, as his servant. Tablets like this document the routine flow of materials (here likely leather goods used for tools, harnesses, or containers) through a large agricultural and craft-production estate around 2000 BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The beginning of the tablet is broken. What survives records that 3 units of a leather item (name partly lost) and 3 units of another item called du10-gan-tibala were taken out of storage, charged against the account of a man named Ana-ah-ili. The month and year names that would date the transaction are broken away. The tablet is sealed, and the seal identifies its owner as Šu-Kabta, here titled 'physician,' son of Naram-ili, with the scribe Iškur-illat, son of Abi'a, declaring himself Šu-Kabta's servant.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [...] 3 (units of) leather/hide [x]-ka-[...] 3 (units of) du10-gan-[ti]-bala [...] from Ana-ah-ili were withdrawn (disbursed). Month: [...] Year: [...] (Seal legend:) Šu-Kabta, physician, son of Naram-ili. Iškur-illat, scribe, son of Abi'a, is your 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
[...] [...] 3(disz) kusz-[x]-ka-[...] 3(disz) du10-gan-[ti]-bala x ki a-na-ah-[i3-li2-ta] ba-zi# iti [...] [mu ...] szu-kab2-ta a-zu dumu na-ra-am-i3-li2 iszkur-illat dub-sar dumu a-bi2-a ARAD2-zu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0965. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-02-017 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322419). 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.