Smithsonian 16

~2050 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·P332579

About this tablet

A routine receipt from the great administrative center of Umma in southern Iraq, written around 2048 BCE under King Šulgi of the Third Dynasty of Ur. An official named Lu-Ninšubur took delivery of about 450 liters of barley from the state mill, issued by the official ARAD, to feed kunga-equids — prized donkey-onager hybrids used for pulling and hauling. The tablet is dated by the year following the king's destruction of the city of Urbilum (modern Erbil), and it carries the seal of the scribe Lugal-emaḫe, showing how even animal fodder moved through a fully accountable bureaucracy.

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

Written in modern English

Receipt: 450 liters of barley, issued as feed for the ziggum team-equids. The grain came out of the mill-house stores and was disbursed by ARAD; Lu-Ninšubur signed for it. Dated to the month 'Barley at the harbor,' in the year after the campaign in which Urbilum was destroyed. Stamped with the seal of Lugal-emaḫe the scribe, son of Lugal-kugani.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

1 gur, 2 barig, 3 ban of barley (= 450 sila), fodder for the ziggum-equids, from the mill-house, from ARAD, Lu-Ninšubur received. Month: "Barley at the harbor" (Umma month 3). Year after: "Urbilum was destroyed" (Šulgi year 46). (Seal:) Lugal-emaḫe, the scribe, son of [Lugal-kugani].

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(asz) 2(barig) 3(ban2) sze gur
sza3-gal kunga2
zi-gu5-um-ma
e2-kikken-ta
ki ARAD2-ta
lu2-nin-szubur
szu ba-ti
iti sze-kar-ra-gal2-la
mu us2-sa ur-bi2-i3-lum ba-hul
lugal-e2-mah-e
dub-sar
dumu [lugal-ku3-ga-ni]

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Smithsonian 16. 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: SI 344991a (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P332579). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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