Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0167
About this tablet
A labor-inspection docket from Garšana, a private estate town in southern Mesopotamia, dated to the reign of Šu-Suen (c. 2035 BCE). It records a small work gang — an unknown number of men and apparently two women — assigned under a foreman to grind malt for beer, and handed over to Ada-lal, a professional brewer. The note 'inspection performed' shows this was a check on the roster, the ancient equivalent of a supervisor signing a timesheet. Garšana's archive is unusual for how much it reveals about the ordinary working lives of laborers, including women, on a great household's payroll.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Work detail: an unspecified number of men plus two women (the figure is uncertain), supervised by foreman Me-Ea, assigned to grinding malt. The crew was signed over to Ada-lal the brewer. Roster inspected and verified. Dated to the month of the Šulgi Festival, in the year King Šu-Suen destroyed the land of Zabšali.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] male workers, 2(?) female workers, foreman: Me-Ea, to grind malt; Ada-lal, the brewer, took (them) in charge. Inspection performed. Month: "Festival of Šulgi." Year: Šu-Suen, the king, destroyed the land of Zab[ša]li.
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 2(disz)? geme2 ugula me-e2-a munu4 nag4-ga2-de3 a-da-lal3 lu2 lunga i3-dab5 gurum2 ak iti ezem-szul-gi mu szu-suen lugal#-e ma-da za-ab-[sza]-li mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0167. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y6 — Land of Zabšali destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-04-050 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322563). 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.