Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1035
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative ledger from Garšana, one of the estate-towns supplying the Ur III state, recording rations of flour, bread, beer-mash, and groats issued to workers — including gala-singers (cultic lamentation performers) and a group called the 'ama-gal' — apparently connected to wall-construction work at the settlement's gates. Texts like this, from the Cornell/Garšana archive, are among the most detailed surviving records of daily provisioning for construction crews and temple personnel in early second-millennium Mesopotamia. The tablet ends with two summation ('total') lines whose figures are now broken away.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This ledger records food rations issued in connection with wall-building at Garšana. It lists an opening quantity of grain (now broken), then notes that 6 sila of coarse flour and 1 sila of fine flour were delivered as a duplicate record at the outer gate and at the brick-clay gate. A further 2 ban of coarse flour, some thin bread, and beer-mash, along with 1 sila of fine groats for soup, went to the gala-singers and a group of senior women, who consumed it. The entry is tied to a day associated with a person or occasion called Tagribtum, in connection with the wall. Two summary totals close the account, but their figures are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ban2 [...] 3 [...] for the wall; 6 sila3 dabin-flour, 1 sila3 esza-flour, (as) counterpart/duplicate, at the outer gate and at the gate of the brick(-clay) [structure], delivered; 2 ban2 dabin-flour, thin bread, dida-mash, 1 sila3 fine groats, for soup, for the gala-singers and the 'ama-gal' (senior women), they consumed (it). Day: Tagribtum, (at) the wall. Total: 5 ban2 [...] Total: [n ...]
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(ban2) [...] 3(disz) [...] bad3-[sze3] 6(disz) sila3 dabin 1(disz) sila3 esza gaba-ri-a ka2-bar-ra u3 ka2 im sig4 kux(KWU147)-ra 2(ban2) dabin ninda sal-la dida#? 1(disz) sila3 nig2-ar3-ra saga tu7-sze3 gala u3 ama-gal-e-ne ib2-gu7 u4 tag-ri-ib-tum bad3 szunigin 5(ban2) [...] szunigin# [n ...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1035. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-06-064 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322653). 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.