NRVN 1, 150

~2028 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·P122366

About this tablet

A small barley loan from Nippur, drawn up in the third year of Ibbi-Suen, the last king of the Ur III dynasty (around 2026 BCE). A man named Aḫuni, son of Ur-ku, borrows 1 gur 1 barig of barley — roughly 360 liters — from a creditor named Ur-Šulpa'e, at the standard Ur III interest rate of one third. The tablet is dated precisely to the eighth day of the month Udru, and the year is named after Ibbi-Suen's destruction of Simurrum in the Zagros foothills. Thousands of such loan notes survive; they are the routine credit paperwork of Mesopotamian farming households.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

Aḫuni, son of Ur-ku, has taken out a barley loan of 1 gur 1 barig (about 360 liters) from Ur-Šulpa'e, at interest of 1 barig 4 ban per gur — the standard one-third rate. He acknowledges receipt of the grain. Dated the 8th day of the month Udru, in the year Ibbi-Suen destroyed Simurrum.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

High confidence

1 gur 1 barig of barley, as an interest-bearing loan; its interest: per 1 gur, 1 barig 4 ban of barley; from Ur-Šulpa'e Aḫuni has received. Month: Udru. The 8th day having passed. Year: Ibbi-Suen, the king, destroyed Simurrum. (seal / owner's line) Aḫuni, son of Ur-ku.

Indicative reading — translated without a photograph. Generated from the transliteration alone, without examining the original. Read it as an accessible first taste, not as a verified catalogue entry.

Our translation engine — Opus 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

1(asz) 1(barig) sze gur ur5-sze3
masz2 1(asz) gur 1(barig) 4(ban2)-ta
ki ur-szul-pa-e3-ta
a-hu!-ni
szu ba-ti
iti udru
u4 8(disz) ba-zal
mu i-bi2-suen lugal-e si-mu-ru-um mu-hul
a-hu-ni
dumu ur-ku

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — NRVN 1, 150. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Ibbi-Suen y1 — Ibbi-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.

Attribution

Image: Ist Ni 00235 (cast: CBS 09728 ?) (Arkeoloji Müzeleri, Istanbul, Turkey) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P122366). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

Related tablets

Related sources

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet

One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.

~2450 BCE

Stele of the Vultures

The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.

~2100 BCE

Code of Ur-Nammu

The oldest surviving law code in human history. The principle that the state — not the wronged family — defines and enforces justice begins here.