Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0365
About this tablet
This is a fragmentary administrative tablet from Garšana, one of the Ur III period estate-archives (c. 2100–2000 BCE) known for meticulous labor and commodity accounting. The surviving lines form a list of personal names — many of them Akkadian in form (Lamazatum, Taribum, Ili-bašti, Ili-turi, Šalim-...) — each paired with a numeral in the sexagesimal counting system (units of 60 and 600). The commodity or activity being counted is lost with the broken top of the tablet, so we cannot say whether these are workdays, rations, reed bundles, or something else, but the pattern is typical of the large workforce-tracking documents produced by the Garšana estate's scribes.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a list pairing individual names with quantities, written in the standard Ur III counting system of sixties and six-hundreds. The beginning is broken, so we don't know what is being counted or totaled — possibly workdays, rations, or materials issued to each person. What survives reads roughly: '10 (?) — Lamazatum,' then entries for Ḫilā, Taribum, and Abima'a with their amounts lost, followed by six clearer entries: 360 units to Ḫanḫabi, 360 to Weṣitum, 240 to Lu-banid, 360 to Ili-bašti, roughly 420 to Ili-turi, roughly 600 to Ili-ibqi, 60 to Šat-ili, and 720 to a person named Šalim-something (the rest of that name is broken off). It's a bookkeeping tally, but the specific commodity or purpose the scribe was tracking is no longer legible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Line 1) [......] 10 (?), Lamazatum (Line 2) [n], Ḫilā (Line 3) [n], Taribum (Line 4) [n], Abima'a (Line 5) 6(geš₂) [= 360], Ḫanḫabi (Line 6) 6(geš₂) [= 360], Weṣitum (Line 7) 4(geš₂) [= 240], Lu-banid (Line 8) 6(geš₂) [= 360], Ili-bašti (Line 9) 7(geš₂)? [= 420?], Ili-turi (Line 10) 1(geš'u)? [= 600?], Ili-ibqi (Line 11) 1(geš₂) [= 60], Šat-ili (Line 12) 1(geš'u) 2(geš₂) [= 720], Šalim-[......]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 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
[nam] 1(u) la-ma-za-[tum] [n] hi-la-[a] [n] ta-ri-bu-[um] [n] a-bi-ma-a 6(gesz2) ha-an-ha-bi2 6(gesz2) we-s,i-tum 4(gesz2) lu2-ba-ni-id 6(gesz2) i3-li2-ba-asz-ti 7(gesz2)? i3-li2-tu-ri 1(gesz'u)? i3-li2-ib2-ki 1(gesz2) sza-at-i3-li2 1(gesz'u) 2(gesz2) sza-lim-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0365. 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 48-06-063 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322652). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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