Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0271
About this tablet
A short labor account from Garšana, a private estate town in southern Mesopotamia, dated to the first year of King Ibbi-Suen (about 2028 BCE). It records a gang of fullers — textile launderers — working at half-rate wages for eight days in connection with a delivery of barley from a plough-lease field, the whole expenditure booked against an official named Iškur-illat. The tablet is explicitly labeled a 'copy,' meaning the scribe duplicated an original record for the estate's own files. Documents like this are the routine bookkeeping that kept a large Ur III household running.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Labor charge: a crew of fullers, paid at the half-day rate, worked eight days. The entry concerns Ṣe-li-bur-ni-rum and a consignment of barley from the leased plough-land at Nag-ti-te, which he had traveled to collect. The cost was charged to the account of Iškur-illat. Dated to the festival month of Mekigal, in the year Ibbi-Suen became king. This tablet is a duplicate of the original record.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] workmen, fullers, at a wage of 1/2 (each), for 8 days — Ṣe-li-bur-ni-rum; delivery: barley of the plough-lease (field), Nag-ti-te (?), (for which) he had gone; [from] Iškur-illat [it was] expended. [Month:] Ezem-mekigal. [Year:] Ibbi-Suen (is) king. [Cop]y.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[n] gurusz lu2 azlag2 a2 1/2(disz) u4# 8(disz)-sze3 s,e-li-bur-ni-rum [mu?]-kux(DU) sze apin-la2-a nag?-ti-te i3-im-gen-na-a [ki] iszkur-illat-ta [ba]-zi [iti] ezem-me-ki-gal2 [mu ]i-bi2-suen lugal [gaba]-ri
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0271. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Ibbi-Suen y1 — Ibbi-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-06-045 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322634). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.