Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0429
About this tablet
An administrative receipt from Garšana, a private estate in southern Iraq around 2037 BCE, in the reign of Šu-Suen of the Ur III dynasty. It records a ration of dates handed out to the builders and hired laborers working on the estate's brewery, kitchen and mill. Dates and barley were the standard wages for construction gangs, and this tablet is one of hundreds from the Garšana archive that let us reconstruct the building of the estate almost day by day. The last word marks it as a duplicate filing copy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Dates, totalling one gur, two barig, two ban and five sila (roughly 375 liters), were shared out among the builders and hired hands during the construction of the brewery, the kitchen and the mill-house. The scribe Puzur-Ninkar oversaw the hand-over; the dates came out of Iškur-illat's stock. Dated to the Akiti month of the year Šu-Suen, king of Ur, destroyed the land of Zabšali. This tablet is a copy.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gur, 2 barig, 2 ban, 5 sila of dates — for the builders and the hired workers it was divided (distributed) to them, at the time of construction work on the brewery, the kitchen, and the mill-house. Conveyor (giri): Puzur-Ninkar, the scribe. From Iškur-illat it was withdrawn (expended). Month: Akiti. Year: [Šu-Suen], king of Ur, destroyed the land of Zabšali. Copy (duplicate).
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(asz) 2(barig) 2(ban2) 5(disz) sila3 zu2-lum <gur> szitim u3 lu2 hun-ga2-e-ne ba-na-ha-la u4 al-tar e2-bappir e2-muhaldim u3 e2-kikken2 giri3 puzur4-nin-kar-ke3 dub-sar ki iszkur-illat-ta ba-zi iti a2-ki-ti mu [szu-suen] lugal uri5[]-ma#-ke4 ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul gaba-ri
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0429. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y1 — Šu-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: CUNES 49-09-143 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323668). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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