Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0443
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III labor-and-rations tablet from the estate archive of Garšana, a Sumerian administrative center in southern Mesopotamia around 2040 BCE. It records that 40 male workers were paid barley rations (3 sila — roughly 3 liters — each) for a single day's work hauling hay from a field called Gili to the settlement of Garšana, under the supervision of a foreman named Šu-Dumuzi. The tablet is explicitly marked as a 'copy' (gaba-ri), meaning it duplicates another record — a reminder that Ur III scribes sometimes kept parallel or backup accounts of the same transaction. Garšana's archive is famous among Assyriologists for its unusually detailed records of women's labor, construction, and agricultural management.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Forty male workers were hired for one day, each paid 3 sila (about 3 liters) of barley as wages. Their job was hauling hay from the field called Gili to the town of Garšana. The crew was overseen by the foreman Šu-Dumuzi. The record is dated to the month of the Šulgi festival, in the year that the land of Zabšali was destroyed (a year-name marking a military campaign of King Šulgi). This particular tablet is noted as a copy of another record.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine40 male laborers, for 1 day, barley, 3 sila each, was disbursed (as hire/wages). Field Gili, to Garšana — hay having been brought. Foreman: Šu-Dumuzi. Month: "festival of Šulgi." Year: "the land of Zabšali was destroyed." Copy.
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
4(u) gurusz u4 1(disz)-sze3 sze 3(disz) sila3-ta ba-hun a-sza3 gi-li gar-sza#-an-na-sze3 in-u de6-a ugula szu-dumu-zi iti ezem-szul-gi mu ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul gaba-ri
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0443. 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 48-06-031 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322620). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.