Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0852
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Garšana, one of the many estate-management tablets from that period recording the movement of animal hides. It documents a transfer of sheep and goat skins — including hides from animals that died rather than being deliberately slaughtered — from an official named Iškur-illat to a recipient named Anah-ili. Such texts illustrate how meticulously the Ur III bureaucracy tracked even byproducts like hides, tying every transaction to a specific month-name and year-name for dating.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This receipt records that 2 hides from grain-fed sheep and 1 hide from a grain-fed billy goat, along with hides from sheep that had died, were handed over by a man named Iškur-illat. Anah-ili received them. The transaction is dated to the month of the 'Festival of Me-ki-gal,' in the year when 'the great stele was erected' — a year-name associated with king Shu-Sin of Ur.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 hides of grain-fed sheep, 1 hide of a grain-fed billy goat, hides of sheep that died (ba-uš2) — from Iškur-illat, [Anah-ili] received. Month: "Festival of Me-ki-gal," Year: "The great stele was erected."
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
2(disz) kusz udu niga 1(disz) kusz masz2-gal niga kusz udu ba-usz2 ki iszkur-illat-ta [a-na-ah-i3-li2] szu-ba-an#-[ti] iti ezem-me-[ki-gal2] mu na-ru2-a-mah mu-ne-du3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0852. 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 49-02-008 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323231). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
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.