Position in chronology
CUSAS 03, 1268
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Garšana, one of the many private-estate settlements whose archives document the day-to-day economy of southern Mesopotamia around 2000 BCE. It records the transfer of three jars of some commodity (now illegible) from a person named Iškur-illat to an agent called Šu-Iškur acting on behalf of Iddin-abum, with the transaction dated and sealed for accountability. Thousands of tablets like this one, mundane in content, together reconstruct the logistics of goods, labor, and personnel that kept a Sumerian estate running.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Three jars of some commodity — the exact contents are lost to damage — were handed over by a man named Iškur-illat. Šu-Iškur, acting as the agent of Iddin-abum, acknowledged receiving them. The transaction is dated to the month of the Mah festival, in the year that the great stele was erected, and the tablet carries the seal of Nu-ub-ra as a record of the exchange.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 jars of ... (sign broken/unclear) [...] from Iškur-illat, Šu-Iškur, the man of Iddin-abum, received. Month: "Festival of Mah" (ezem-mah). Year: "The great stele was fashioned" (mu-du3). Seal of Nu-ub-ra.
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
3(disz) dug HI?-x-[...] ki iszkur-illat-ta szu-iszkur lu2 i-din-a-bu-um [szu] ba-an-ti iti ezem-mah mu na-ru2-a-mah mu-du3 kiszib3 nu-ub-ra
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUSAS 03, 1268. 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 49-12-046 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from Garšana (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P323801). 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.