Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1012
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III–period livestock disbursement record from Garšana, an administrative estate that supplied labor and offerings for the state cult around 2029 BCE. It logs sheep and a kid handed out from the flocks of a man named Ili-bilani for regular offerings to the goddess Inanna of Zabala, the god Šara of Umma, the king's statue, and two named individuals. The tablet closes with a seal impression naming Šu-Kabta and his scribe Iškur-illat — everyday bookkeeping from one of the best-documented Ur III agricultural estates.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record notes five animals handed out from Ili-bilani's stock: one sheep for the regular offering to Inanna of Zabala, one sheep for the regular offering to Šara of Umma, one kid for the king's statue, one sheep for a person named Malati, and three sheep for a person named Nin-zišagal. The disbursement is dated to the month of the Mekigal festival, in the year the land of Zabšali was destroyed (a Šu-Sin regnal year). The tablet carries the seal of Šu-Kabta, described here as a physician and son of Naram-ili, sealed on his behalf by his scribe Iškur-illat, son of Abia.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sheep, regular offering, (for) Inanna of Zabala; 1 sheep, regular offering, (for) Šara of Umma; 1 kid, (for) the statue of the king; 1 sheep, (for) Malati; 3 sheep, (for) Nin-zišagal; from Ili-bilani — withdrawn (disbursed). Month: "Festival of Mekigal." Year: "The land of Zabšali was destroyed." (Seal legend:) Šu-Kabta, physician (a-zu), son of Naram-ili. Iškur-illat, scribe, son of Abia, 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
1(disz) udu sa2-du11 inanna zabala4 1(disz) udu sa2-du11 szara2 umma[] 1(disz) masz2 alan lugal 1(disz) udu ma#-la-ti 3(disz) udu nin-zi-sza3-gal2# ki i3-li2-bi-la-ni-ta ba-zi iti ezem-me-ki-gal2 mu ma-da za-ab#-sza-li ba-hul 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, 1012. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-02-007 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322409). 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.