Orient 55, 170 no. 18

~2032 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·P424383

About this tablet

A small loan document from Nippur, written about 2030 BCE. A temple gatekeeper named Ubar, who guarded the doorway of the goddess Ninlil's sanctuary, borrowed one shekel of silver — a modest but real sum, roughly a month's wages for a hired man — from a merchant called Lugal-kuzu. The tablet is dated to the day, and the borrower's own seal, naming him and his office, was rolled across it as his signature. Texts like this show how ordinary temple staff in the Ur III empire used private merchants as bankers.

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

Written in modern English

Ubar, the gatekeeper of the Ninlil temple, borrowed one shekel of silver at interest from the merchant Lugal-kuzu and confirms receipt of it. The transaction was recorded on the 8th day of the third month, in the year King Šu-Suen sacked the land of Zabšali. The seal impressed on the tablet reads simply: "Ubar, doorkeeper of Ninlil."

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

High confidence

1 shekel of silver, as an interest-bearing loan, from Lugal-kuzu the merchant, Ubar, doorkeeper of Ninlil, has received. Month: "Bricks" (month III), the 8th day having passed. Year: Šu-Suen the king destroyed the land of Zabšali. (seal inscription) Ubar, doorkeeper of Ninlil.

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(disz) gin2 ku3-babbar
ur5-sze3
ki lugal-ku3-zu dam-gar3-ta
u-bar i3-du8 nin-lil2-la2
szu ba-ti
iti sig4 u4 8(disz) ba-zal
mu szu-suen lugal-e ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul
u-bar
i3-du8 nin-lil2-la2

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Orient 55, 170 no. 18. 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 Šu-Suen y6 — Land of Zabšali destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.

Attribution

Image: WCMA 20.1.16 (Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P424383). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

Related tablets

Related sources

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet (VAT 15211)

An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.

~2450 BCE

Stele of the Vultures

An early surviving historical monument that joins named rulers, a territorial dispute and religious oaths. It shows how a city-state turned victory into a lasting public claim, without establishing that this was the first recorded conflict.

~2100 BCE

Code of Ur-Nammu

Among the oldest surviving written law collections. It provides an early witness to royal justice and specified compensation, rather than a starting date for law itself.