Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1128
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Garšana, an estate connected to the general Šu-Kabta and his household. It records disbursements of milled grain products — bran, fine flour, crushed flour, and second-quality pea/gu-flour — issued from an official named Malik-bani and received by Adallal, a cook in Šu-Kabta's service. The year name dates it to the destruction of the land of Zabšali, a known campaign of King Šu-Suen, giving the tablet a precise historical anchor within the late Ur III period.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This receipt records a delivery of milled grain products handed over by Malik-bani: 1 barig 1 ban of bran, some amount (broken) plus 2 ban of fine flour, 3 barig 2 ban of crushed flour, and 1 ban of second-quality pea-flour. Adallal, a cook working for Šu-Kabta, took delivery of these goods. The transaction is dated to the month of the Šu-Suen festival, in the year that the land of Zabšali was destroyed — a standard Ur III dating formula. The tablet closes by identifying Adallal as cook and servant (ARAD2) of Šu-Kabta.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 barig 1 ban bran (duḫ). [n] barig 2 ban fine flour (zì sig15). 3 barig 2 ban crushed/ground flour (zì gazₓ[KUM]). 1 ban second-quality gu-flour (zì-gu ús). [From] Malik-bani — Adallal received. Month: 'Festival of Šu-Suen.' Year: 'The land of Zabšali was destroyed.' Adallal, the cook, servant of Šu-Kabta.
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(barig) 1(ban2) duh [n] 2(ban2) zi3 sig15 3(barig) 2(ban2) zi3 gazx(KUM) 1(ban2) zi3-gu us2 [ki] ma-lik-ba-ni-ta [a]-da#-lal3 szu# ba-an-ti iti# ezem-szu-suen mu ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul a-da-lal3 muhaldim ARAD2 szu-kab-ta2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1128. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-11-026 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323712). 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.