Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 0870
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from the estate of Garšana in southern Iraq, dated to around 2025 BCE. It records the transfer of two animal hides — from a grain-fed sheep and a grain-fed billy-goat — from an official named Iškur-illat to a recipient named Ana-ah-ili. Garšana was a provincial estate that generated enormous quantities of these small bureaucratic dockets tracking livestock, hides, and craft materials moving through royal storehouses. The year formula fixes the date to the third regnal year of King Šu-Suen, when a military campaign destroyed the land of Zabšali, a region in the Zagros/Iranian highlands, giving historians a precise anchor point.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ana-ah-ili received two hides — one from a grain-fed sheep and one from a grain-fed billy-goat — handed over by Iškur-illat. The transaction was recorded in the month of the Ninazu festival, in the year that the land of Zabšali was destroyed (the third year of King Šu-Suen's reign).
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 hide of a grain-fed sheep, 1 hide of a grain-fed billy-goat, from Iškur-illat, Ana-ah-ili received. Month: festival of Ninazu, year: 'the land of Zabšali was destroyed.'
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
1(disz) kusz udu niga 1(disz) kusz masz2-gal niga ki iszkur-illat-ta a-na-ah-i3-li2 szu ba-an-ti iti ezem-nin-a-zu mu ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 0870. 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 48-04-036 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P322549). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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