CUSAS 03, 0951

~2028 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·P322542

About this tablet

A small receipt on clay from Garšana, a private estate town in southern Iraq near Umma, dated to the first year of Ibbi-Sîn, the last king of the Ur III dynasty (c. 2028 BCE). A leatherworker named Anaḫ-ilī takes delivery of two hides — one from a full-grown sheep, one from a lamb — handed over by a man called Iškur-illat. The seal impressed on the tablet gives the craftsman's own name, trade, and father's name, so we know exactly who signed for the goods. It is the ordinary paperwork of a workshop: raw material logged in, with a date and a responsible party, so the accounts would balance at the end of the year.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

Received: one sheepskin and one lambskin, transferred from Iškur-illat. Signed for by Anaḫ-ilī. Dated to the intercalary month of the Mekigal festival, in the year Ibbi-Sîn came to the throne. The seal on the document reads: Annaḫ-ilī, leatherworker, son of Saba.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Experimental

1 sheep hide, 1 [hide of] a lamb, from Iškur-illat, Anaḫ-ilī has received. Month: intercalary month "Festival of Mekigal." Year: Ibbi-Sîn (became) king. (Seal inscription:) Annaḫ-ilī, leatherworker, son of Saba.

Indicative reading — translated without a photograph. Generated from the transliteration alone, without examining the original. Read it as an accessible first taste, not as a verified catalogue entry.

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

1(disz) kusz udu
1(disz) [kusz] sila4#
ki iszkur#-illat#-ta
a-na-ah-i3-li2
szu ba-ti
iti diri ezem-me-ki-gal2
mu i-bi2-suen lugal
an-na-ah-i3-li2 aszgab
dumu sa2-ba

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0951. 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 48-04-029 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322542). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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