Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0423
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III labor-and-rations record from the great estate archive at Garšana, a site famous for its meticulous accounting of hired female workers (geme2) who ground grain into flour for the household's bread and beer production. The tablet notes seven women working a single day and the barley paid out to them as wages, under a named foreman, and dates the transaction by month and by a royal year-name commemorating a military campaign against the land of Zabšali (a year associated with king Šu-Sin). The closing names — Malik-bani, servant of Naram-ili — likely identify the official responsible for the transaction or the tablet's filing within the estate bureaucracy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Seven female laborers worked for one day. They were paid three sila of barley each as wages for grinding grain into flour, under the supervision of the foreman Lila'a. The record is dated to the month of the Ninazu festival, in the year the land of Zabšali was destroyed. It was handled by Malik-bani, servant of Naram-ili.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine7 female workers, for 1 day; barley, 3 sila each, was disbursed (as wages/hire); assigned to grind flour; [foreman]: Lila'a; [month]: "Festival of Ninazu"; year: "the land of Zabšali was destroyed." Malik-bani, servant of Naram-ili.
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
7(disz) geme2 u4 1(disz)-sze3 sze 3(disz) sila3-ta ba-hun nig2#-ar3-ra ar3-ra-de3# gub#-ba [ugula] li-la-a2 [iti] ezem#-nin-a-zu mu ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul ma-lik-ba-ni ARAD2 na-ra-am-i3-li2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0423. 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 48-04-039 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322552). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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