Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1389
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from the Ur III estate of Garšana, badly broken at the top where a quantity and one or more personal names once stood. What survives clearly is the dating formula — the month 'u5-bi2-gu7' and the year Šu-Suen's second regnal year, remembered by the building of a great ceremonial barge for the gods Enlil and Ninlil — followed by the names of Šu-Kabta, a well-known administrator at Garšana usually titled 'general' but here called 'physician,' and the scribe Iškur-illat, son of Abi'a, who identifies himself as Šu-Kabta's subordinate. Garšana was a Ur III provincial estate whose archive is rich in labor and household administration; this fragment likely once recorded a delivery or disbursement now lost to breakage.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The beginning of this receipt or account is destroyed — only a trace of a quantity and a personal name survive, followed by several fully broken lines. The record is dated to the month called u5-bi2-gu7, in the year 'the great barge of Enlil and Ninlil was built' — that is, the second year of King Šu-Suen. The document is associated with Šu-Kabta, described here as a physician (though elsewhere at Garšana he holds the title 'general'), son of Naram-ili, and was written or authenticated by the scribe Iškur-illat, son of Abi'a, who names himself as Šu-Kabta's subordinate.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (unit) [PN]-na? [...] [...] [...] [...]-uš (broken) Month: u5-bi2-gu7. Year: 'The great barge of Enlil (and) Ninlil was built for them.' Šu-Kabta, physician, son of Naram-ili. Iškur-illat, scribe, son of Abi'a, is your/his 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) [...]-na? [...] [...] [...] [...]-usz#? iti u5-bi2-gu7 mu ma2-gur8-mah en-lil2 nin-lil2-ra mu-ne-[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, 1389. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-04-011 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322525). 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.