Position in chronology
JAC 29, 023-030 02
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III ration voucher from Irisagrig, one of the many administrative tablets recording food disbursed to royal messengers on official business. Two men, Puzur-Iškur and Šu-Suen, each receive a modest allotment of soup and fish — one while traveling from a place called Duran (BAD3.AN) to report to the king, the other while on a mission to round up fugitive workers and palace slaves. The tablet is dated precisely to day 27 of the month of the Šulgi festival, in the year Huhnuri was destroyed (a year-name from the reign of Šu-Suen), giving a vivid, dated snapshot of the logistics that kept royal couriers moving across the empire.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a receipt: one bowl of soup and one fish were issued to Puzur-Iškur, a royal messenger, on the day he traveled from Duran to report to the king. Another identical ration — soup and one fish — went to Šu-Suen, also a royal messenger, on the day he set out to round up runaway workers and palace slaves. Both disbursements were formally booked as expenditure. The record is dated to the 27th day of the month of the Šulgi festival, in the year Huhnuri was destroyed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 sila3 soup, 1 fish — Puzur-Iškur, the king's messenger, on the day he went from BAD₃.AN to the king; 1 sila3 soup, 1 fish — Šu-Suen, the king's messenger, on the day he went to seize the fugitive troops, the palace slaves — booked expenditure. Month: festival of Šulgi. Year: Huhnuri was destroyed. Day 27.
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) sila3 tu7 1(disz) ku6# puzur4#-iszkur lu2 kin-gi4-a lugal u4 |BAD3.AN|-ta ki lugal-sze3 ba-gen-na-a 1(disz) sila3 tu7 1(disz) ku6 szu-suen lu2 kin-gi4-a-lugal u4 erin2 zah3 ARAD2 e2-gal dab5-ba-de3 im-gen-na-a zi-ga iti ezem-szul-gi mu hu-uh2-nu-ri ba-hul u4 2(u) 7(disz)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — JAC 29, 023-030 02. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 478822 (private: anonymous, Jerusalem) — from Irisagrig (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P478822). 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.