Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1160
About this tablet
This is a small administrative receipt from the Ur III estate at Garšana, recording the disbursement of a single lamb charged out from the account of a man named Ili-bilani. The tablet is dated by a local month name and by a royal year-name referring to the construction of a great ceremonial barge (magur-boat), and it closes with a seal caption naming Šu-Kabta — a prominent administrator at Garšana, here titled 'physician' rather than his usual military title 'general' — whose seal was applied by the scribe Iškur-illat, son of Abi'a, acting as his subordinate. Tablets like this are the everyday bookkeeping of a large agricultural household: tiny transactions, meticulously dated and sealed, that together reconstruct the operations of an Ur III estate around 2000 BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One lamb was taken out of the account belonging to Ili-bilani. This was recorded in the month called 'u5-bi2-gu7,' in the year when the great ceremonial barge was built. The document is sealed in the name of Šu-Kabta, described here as a physician and son of Naram-ili, with the scribe Iškur-illat — son of Abi'a — identifying himself as Šu-Kabta's servant in the seal inscription.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 lamb, from Ili-bilani, was withdrawn (booked out). Month: "u5-bi2-gu7," year: "The great magur-boat was built." (Seal:) Šu-Kabta, physician, son of Naram-ili; Iškur-illat, scribe, son of Abi'a, is your servant.
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(disz) sila4 ki i3-li2#-bi#-la-ni-ta# ba-zi iti u5-bi2-gu7 mu ma2-gur8-mah# ba-du3 szu-kab2-ta a-zu dumu na-ra-am-i3-li2 iszkur-illat dub-sar dumu a-bi2-a ARAD2-zu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1160. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-02-011 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322413). 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.