Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1191
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III livestock disbursement record from Garšana, a provincial estate center in southern Mesopotamia tied to the general Šu-Kabta and his household. It documents sheep, a suckling kid, and a black pig withdrawn from the account of an official named Ili-bilani for delivery to a woman called Ummi-Kabta, with the transaction handled by the cook Adalal, a servant of Šu-Kabta. Tablets like this — routine but precisely dated — let historians reconstruct the daily rhythms of provisioning, ritual offerings, and household economy at a major Ur III estate around 2040 BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records an allotment of livestock: 3 sheep, 1 milk-fed kid, 1 black pig (apparently earmarked for some ritual or statue-related purpose, though the exact term is unclear), and 2 grass-fed sheep. These animals went to Ummi-Kabta, described as a daughter of the household, and were charged out of the account of the official Ili-bilani. The transaction was dated to the month of the Ninazu festival, in the year 'the land of Zabšali was destroyed' — a year-name from the reign of King Šulgi. The cook Adalal, who worked under Šu-Kabta, is named as the one responsible for the disbursement.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 sheep, 1 milk-fed kid, 1 black pig — tak4-alan (uncertain: 'set aside/consigned, for the statue'?), 2 grass-fed sheep — (for) Ummi-Kabta, daughter of the household (dumu-munus e2-a), withdrawn (ba-zi) from Ili-bilani. Month: 'Festival of Ninazu.' Year: 'the land of Zabšali was destroyed.' Adalal, 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
3(disz) udu 1(disz) masz2 ga szah2 ge6 tak4 alan 2(disz) udu u2 um-mi-kab-ta2 dumu-munus e2-a ki# i3-li2-bi-la-ni-ta ba-zi iti ezem-nin-a-zu 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, 1191. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-04-004 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323347). 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.