Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0544
About this tablet
This is a routine payroll receipt from the Ur III administrative estate at Garšana, a rural center in southern Mesopotamia known for its large archive of labor and supply records tied to a royal household. It documents a payment of five gur of barley disbursed as wages for hired laborers, handed over by an official named Iškur-illat and received by the foreman Dingir-bani. The year formula naming the destruction of Simurrum situates the transaction within one of the Ur III kings' eastern military campaigns, giving the tablet a precise historical anchor even though it records nothing more dramatic than a barley payment.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Five gur of barley were paid out as wages for hired workers. The grain came from Iškur-illat and was received by Dingir-bani, the foreman in charge of the hired laborers. The transaction is dated to the month of the Šulgi festival, in the year that Simurrum was destroyed. The tablet ends with Dingir-bani's name and that of his father, Ili-šar, evidently recorded as the responsible or receiving party.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 gur [barley], the wages of hired workers, from Iškur-illat, Dingir-bani, foreman of the hired workers, received. Month: "Festival of Šulgi." Year: "Simurrum was destroyed." Dingir-bani, son of Ili-šar.
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
5(asz) [sze] gur a2 lu2 hun-ga2-sze3 ki iszkur-illat-ta dingir-ba-ni ugula lu2 hun-ga2 szu ba-ti iti ezem-szul-gi mu si-mu-ru-um ba-hul dingir-ba-ni dumu i3-li2-szar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0544. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šulgi y23 — Simurrum destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-06-015 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322604). 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.