Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1043
About this tablet
This is a short Ur III 'letter-order' — an administrative directive, not a private letter, from the great household archive at Garšana in southern Iraq, around 2100–2000 BCE. It instructs an official named Ila-aknuid to release a fixed quantity of barley (over 5 gur) as rations for a work-gang, to be handed over to a man called Šu-Nin-isina. Garšana was a Ur III estate that generated thousands of such workaday administrative texts tracking the feeding and management of large labor forces.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A memo to the official Ila-aknuid: give the order. Release 5 gur, 1 barig, 4 ban2 of barley — rations for the work crew — to Šu-Nin-isina; make sure it is handed over to him. The rest of the tablet is broken and illegible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineIla-aknuid — speak to him! 5 gur 1 barig 4 ban2 barley, barley rations of the workers, (for) Šu-Nin-isina — let it be given to him. [...] ... [...] ...
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
i-la-ak-nu-id u3-na-a-du11 5(asz) 1(barig) 4(ban2) sze gur sze-ba erin2-na szu-nin-isin2[] [he2-na]-ab-[szum2]-mu# [...]-x [...]-x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1043. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-13-027 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323847). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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