Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1378
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from the estate archive of Garšana, a rural Ur III administrative center known for its enormous corpus of construction and craft-production records. It logs the issue of rope (made from the gazi plant) and reed material — probably intended for building or storage work — routed through a storehouse called Ekibagara, handed over to a person named Dada, processed by the scribe Puzur-Ninkarak, and debited from the account of a supervisor named Iškur-illat. Texts like this one are part of the vast bookkeeping apparatus that tracked every rope, reed bundle, and workday on the estate.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Sixty two-ply gazi-fiber ropes, each one and a half ninda long, together with eighty bundles or lengths of reed cord, were issued for the storehouse known as Ekibagara. The goods were assigned to a man named Dada. The scribe Puzur-Ninkarak handled the transaction, and the materials were charged out of the account of Iškur-illat.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1(geš2) [=60] gazi-ropes, plied a second time (two-ply), doubled, length: 1 1/2 ninda each; 2. 1(geš2) 2(u) [=80] reed-cords/reed bundles, NE(?); 3. (for) the storehouse E-kibagara; 4. was assigned/placed to Dada; 5. via Puzur-Ninkarak, the scribe; 6. [from] Iškur-illat it was withdrawn.
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
1(gesz2) dur gazi a-ra2# 2(disz) tab-ba gid2 1(disz) 1/2(disz) ninda-ta 1(gesz2) 2(u) sa gi NE e2-ki-ba-gar-ra da-da-sze3 ba-a-gar giri3 puzur4-nin-kar-ra-ak dub-sar [ki ]iszkur-illat-ta ba-zi
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1378. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-06-043 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322632). 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.