Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1209
About this tablet
A small kitchen account from Garšana, a estate-town in southern Iraq run by the general and physician Šu-Kabta and his wife Simat-Ištaran, dating to the very end of the Ur III dynasty (c. 2028 BCE). It records two batches of bread — one of fine sifted flour, one a type called ebiatum — issued or baked under the supervision of a cook named Ada-lal, who identifies himself as Šu-Kabta's servant. Tablets like this are the daily paperwork of a great household's bakery, and the Garšana archive is unusual for how completely it documents one estate's workforce, from brewers and cooks to builders.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Bread issued: 80 sila made from fine flour, plus 20 sila of ebiatum bread. Dated to the festival month of [name lost], in the year Ibbi-Suen became king. Handled by Ada-lal the cook, on the staff of Šu-Kabta.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 barig 2 ban₂ of bread (made) of fine flour; 2 ban₂ of ebiatum-bread. Month: “Festival of [...].” Year: Ibbi-Suen (became) king(?). Ada-lal, the cook, servant of Šu-Kabta.
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(barig) 2(ban2) ninda zi3 zi3 sig15 2(ban2) ninda e-bi-a-tum iti ezem-[...] mu i-bi2-suen lugal? a-da-lal3 muhaldim ARAD2 szu-kab-ta2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1209. 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 49-04-003 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323346). 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.