Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1398
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative tablet from Garšana, part of the vast archive documenting the estate of Princess Simat-Ištaran and her officials. It records an amount of field-land (1 bur3, roughly 6.5 hectares) whose harvested straw has been gathered into bundled sheaves but not yet threshed — a routine notation from the agricultural bookkeeping of a large estate. The document is sealed by an official named Šarrum-ili and names Ili-andul, son of Warad-ebum, as the scribe responsible for its delivery or recording — the everyday paperwork tracking crop-processing labor on a Sumerian institutional farm around 2000 BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet notes that on one bur3 of farmland, the straw has been gathered into doubled sheaves but has not yet been threshed. The record bears the seal of Šarrum-ili. Ili-andul is responsible for delivering it — the same Ili-andul, son of Warad-ebum, who served as the scribe who wrote this docket.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 bur3 of field: doubled sheaves of straw, not (yet) threshed. Sealed by Šarrum-ili. Ili-andul is to deliver (it) — Ili-andul, son of Warad-ebum, the scribe.
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(bur3) GAN2 zar3 tab-ba nu ri-ri-ga kiszib3 szar-ru-um-i3-li2 i3-li2-an-dul3 tum3-dam i3-li2-an-dul3 dumu ARAD-e!-bu-um dub-sar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1398. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-06-012 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322601). 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.