Orient 55, 164 no. 10

~2037 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·P424385

About this tablet

A silver receipt from the city of Umma in southern Iraq, dated to the seventh year of King Šu-Suen of the Third Dynasty of Ur (about 2030 BCE). Gardeners in the state orchard system had fallen short in their accounts, and this tablet records that their outstanding deficit — a third of a mina of silver, roughly 167 grams — was made good and handed over by an official named Šara-kam to the receiving officer Gu-du-du. It is a small window into how tightly the Ur III bureaucracy audited its workers: even arrears were tracked, repaid, and receipted in writing.

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

Written in modern English

Received: one-third of a mina of silver (about 167 grams), covering the repayment of the shortfall that the gardeners owed on their accounts. The silver was handed over by Šara-kam and received by Gu-du-du. Dated to the year in which Šu-Suen, king of Ur, destroyed the land of Zabšali — his seventh year on the throne.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

1/3 mina of silver, the repaid arrears (deficit) of the gardeners — from Šara-kam Gu-du-du received. Year: "Šu-Suen, king of Ur, destroyed the land of Zabšali."

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 — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

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Transliteration

1/3(disz) ma-na ku3-babbar
la2-ia3 su-ga nu-kiri6-ke4-ne
ki szara2-kam-ta
gu-du-du
szu ba-ti
mu szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Orient 55, 164 no. 10. 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 y1 — Šu-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.

Attribution

Image: WCMA 20.1.18 (Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P424385). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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