NRVN 1, 148

~2028 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·P122364

About this tablet

A short loan contract from Nippur, written near the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur (around 2025 BCE). A man named Ea-šar borrows four gur of barley — roughly 1,200 liters — from Ur-Šulpa'e, at the standard Sumerian interest rate of one barig four ban2 per gur, about 33 percent. The scribe dates it precisely: the sixth day of the month Udru, in the year King Ibbi-Suen destroyed the city of Simurrum. Documents like this are the ordinary paperwork of Mesopotamian credit, and their year-names double as a skeleton for the chronology of the whole period.

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

Written in modern English

Ea-šar has taken out a barley loan of four gur from Ur-Šulpa'e, at interest — one barig and four ban2 for every gur borrowed, the customary third. He received the grain on the sixth day of the month of Udru, in the year King Ibbi-Suen sacked Simurrum.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

4 gur of barley, as an interest-bearing loan. The interest is 1 barig [4 ban2] per 1 gur. From Ur-Šulpa'e, Ea-šar has received (it). Month: Udru, day 6 having passed. Year: Ibbi-Suen the king destroyed Simurrum.

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.

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Transliteration

4(asz) sze gur ur5-sze3
masz2 1(asz) gur 1(barig) [4(ban2)-ta]
ki ur-szul-pa-e3-ta
e2-a-szar
szu ba-ti
iti udru
u4 6(disz) ba-zal
mu i-bi2-suen lugal-e si-mu-ru-um mu-hul

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — NRVN 1, 148. 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). [year-name] Dated to Ibbi-Suen y1 — Ibbi-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.

Attribution

Image: Ist Ni 00058 (cast: CBS 09740 ?) (Arkeoloji Müzeleri, Istanbul, Turkey) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P122364). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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