Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1042
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III 'letter-order' from the Garšana archive — an administrative tablet, not a personal letter, that instructs an official to hand over specified goods. Garšana was a provincial estate center administered largely by the household of the general Šu-Kabta and his wife Simat-Ištaran, and such letter-orders were routine paperwork directing the release of grain, oil, and wool from storehouses. The formula 'speak to PN ... let it be given' is a standard Ur III bureaucratic phrase, essentially a written instruction passed through a messenger.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Tell Iškur-illat: release 5 gur of barley, 1 ban2 and 2 sila3 of sesame oil, and [a certain amount] of wool. This covers an obligatory delivery — the purchase price owed to Murani (name uncertain) — and it is to be handed over to Ahanišu.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[To] Iškur-illat, speak! 5 gur barley, 1 ban2 2 sila3 sesame oil, [n] mina(s) of wool — the nig2-dab5-obligation, the purchase price of Murani(?) — to Ahanišu let it be given!
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
[]iszkur-illat u3-na-a-du11 5(asz) sze gur 1(ban2) 2(disz) sila3 i3-gesz [n] ma-na siki [nig2]-dab5 sa10 mu-ra?-ni a-ha-ni-szu he2-na-ab-szum2-mu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1042. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-02-007 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323230). 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.