CUSAS 03, 0371

~2050 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·P329464

About this tablet

This is a fragment of an Ur III administrative tablet from Garšana, one of the many labor- or ration-accounting texts from the estate archive associated with Šulgi-simti (a wife of King Šulgi). It lists individual workers or overseers — Ubarum, a woman whose name is broken (Geme-...), Ur-sukkal, Namura, and Šat-ili (an Akkadian name meaning roughly 'she of the god') — each assigned a sexagesimal quantity, followed by a grand total far larger than the sum of the visible entries, showing that this tablet is only the tail end of a longer list whose earlier lines are lost. Such accounts, common at Garšana, typically tracked days of labor, quantities of bricks or reed, or similar bulk commodities distributed among named workers and foremen.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

This record lists several workers or crew leaders along with quantities counted in the Sumerian base-60 system: Ubarum is credited with 360 units, a woman named Geme-[...] with 240, Ur-sukkal with 360, someone named Namura (uncertain) with 240, and Šat-ili with 240. The tablet then gives a running total far exceeding the sum of these entries — 9,180 plus an unreadable additional amount — which tells us this is only the final portion of what was originally a much longer list of names and figures; the earlier lines that would explain the discrepancy are lost.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

6(gesz2) [=360]: U-barum 4(gesz2) [=240]: Geme-[...] 6(gesz2) [=360]: Ur-sukkal 4(gesz2) [=240]: Namura(?) [...] 4(gesz2) [=240]: Šat-ili 2(šar2) 3(geš'u) 3(geš2) [n] [=9180+n]: (total)

Indicative reading — translated without a photograph. Generated from the transliteration alone, without examining the original. Read it as an accessible first taste, not as a verified catalogue entry.

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

6(gesz2) u-bar#-um#
4(gesz2) geme2-[...]
6(gesz2) ur-sukkal
4(gesz2) na-mu-ra#? [...]
4(gesz2) sza-at-i3-[li2]
2(szar2) 3(gesz'u) 3(gesz2) [n]

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0371. 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 48-12-057 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P329464). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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