Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0349
About this tablet
This is a routine Ur III labor roster from the great estate of Garšana, one of many administrative tablets that tracked crews of builders (szitim) and other workers assigned to construction projects around 2000 BCE. It lists groups of male workers (gurusz) and female workers (geme2), organized by their place of origin or affiliation (men of Isin, men of a household called Nig-baba) and by the foremen (ugula) responsible for them — Irib, Lu-dulugal-pa'e, Bazi, and Zala'a. Such texts formed the backbone of a highly bureaucratic labor economy that mobilized hundreds of workers for royal and institutional building projects.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records crews of construction laborers at Garšana. One group is a certain number of male builders described as 'men of Isin'; another two male builders belong to a household or person called Nig-baba; two more male builders follow, though their description is broken. A crew of 16 male workers is placed under the foreman Irib, who is identified as the slave of a man named Ea-meš. Five male workers and one female worker are grouped under a man named Lu-dulugal-pa'e. Further female workers are assigned to a foreman named Bazi, and the final, badly broken line names another foreman, Zala'a, overseeing an unspecified number of workers.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] male workers, builders, men of Isin. [2] male workers, builders, men of Nig-baba. 2 male workers, [builders]. 16 male workers; foreman: Irib, slave of Ea-meš. [5] male workers, 1 female worker, (under) Lu-dulugal-pa'e. [n] female workers; foreman: Bazi. [n ...]; foreman: Zala'a.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[n gurusz szitim lu2]-i3-si-in [2(disz)] gurusz szitim lu2 nig2-ba-[ba6] 2(disz) gurusz [szitim] 1(u) 6(disz) gurusz ugula i-ri-ib ARAD2 e2-A-me-esz2 [5(disz)] gurusz 1(disz) geme2 lu2-du6-lugal-pa-e3 [n] geme2 ugula ba-zi [n x] ugula [za]-la-a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0349. 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).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 48-09-019 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322929). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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