Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1117
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III-period expenditure record from the estate at Garšana, a provincial administrative center in southern Iraq around 2020 BCE. It logs the withdrawal of everyday provisions — barley, coarse flour, a jar of malt beverage, a medicinal or culinary plant, and dates — from the stores of an official named Iškur-illat, processed under the authority of the scribe Puzur-Ninkar. The dated year-name, referencing the destruction of the land of Zabšali, ties the document to the reign of king Šu-Suen and helps modern scholars anchor Garšana's household accounts to a precise historical year.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This receipt records a withdrawal of supplies — some barley, a quantity of coarse flour, a jar of dida beer, a bit of u2-kur plant, and some dates — taken out of the stores kept by Iškur-illat. The transaction was handled by the scribe Puzur-Ninkar. It happened in the month of the Šulgi festival, in the year that the land of Zabšali was destroyed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n sila3] barley, [n sila3] dabin-flour, [n sila3] jar of du-dida (a beer/malt product), [n] sila3 u2-kur-plant, [n sila3] dates (from the date palm) [from Iškur-illat] it was withdrawn. [Via] Puzur-Ninkar, the scribe. [Month:] 'Festival of Šulgi'. Year: 'the land of Zabšali was destroyed.'
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
[n sila3] sze [n sila3] dabin [n sila3] dug dida du [n] sila3 u2-kur [n sila3] geszimmar [ki iszkur]-illat-ta ba-zi [giri3] puzur4#-nin-[kar]-ke3 dub-sar [iti] ezem#-szul-gi mu# ma-da za-ab-[sza]-li mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1117. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-06-060 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322649). 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.