Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1232
About this tablet
A grain-transfer receipt from Garšana, a private estate town in southern Mesopotamia, dated to the third year of Ibbi-Suen, the last king of the Third Dynasty of Ur (about 2026 BCE). It records emmer and wheat drawn from two storage depots — one attached to a field called Mu-mu, the other inside a place named Timbubu-ašgi — handed over by an official named Idi-Erra to a man called Ur-Dumuzi, with the estate's chief administrator Ea-šar acting as intermediary. The scribe's arithmetic is exact: the two entries add up precisely to the stated totals, a small demonstration of how tightly Ur III bookkeeping tracked grain.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
From the granary at the Mu-mu field: 5 gur of emmer and 3 barig 3 ban of wheat. From the granary at Timbubu-ašgi: 15 gur 2 barig of emmer and 1 barig 3 ban of wheat. Total: 20 gur 2 barig of emmer and 1 gur of wheat. Ur-Dumuzi took delivery of this grain from Idi-Erra, with Ea-šar, the estate's chief administrator, handling the transfer. Dated to the month of u5-bi2-gu7, in the year King Ibbi-Suen of Ur destroyed Simurrum.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 gur of emmer, 3 barig 3 ban2 of wheat — the grain-depot of the field Mu-mu. 15 gur 2 barig of emmer, 1 barig 3 ban2 of wheat — the grain-depot within Timbubu-ašgi. (Total:) 20 gur 2 barig of emmer, 1 gur of wheat. From Idi-Erra Ur-Dumuzi has received. Via Ea-šar, the chief household administrator (šabra). Month: u5-bi2-gu7. Year: Ibbi-Suen, king of Ur, destroyed Simurrum.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
5(asz) ziz2 gur 3(barig) 3(ban2) gig i3-dub a-sza3 mu10-mu10 1(u) 5(asz) 2(barig) ziz2 gur 1(barig) 3(ban2) gig i3-dub sza3 ti-im-bu-bu-asz-gi5 2(u) 2(barig) ziz2 gur 1(asz) gig gur ki i-di3-er3-ra-ta ur-dumu-zi szu ba-ti giri3 e2-a-szar szabra iti u5-bi2-gu7 mu i-bi2-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 si-mu-ru-um mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1232. 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 49-11-042 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323728). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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.