Position in chronology
Letter from Ur-dun to Shulgi about the purchase of cedar resin
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSLSay to my lord: this is what the merchant Ur-dun, your servant, says: My lord gave me silver and sent me to a distant land in order to purchase cedar resin. After I had entered the land and had purchased cedar resin, Apillaca, the 'Sage of the Assembly', sent men to me and they took away my goods. When I arrived at his palace gate, no one enquired about my business. Aradju, your servant, and Babati, the ...... official, had gone from Zimudar to Simurrum and had learnt ...... and their messengers ....... ...... of my lord ....... Being in a weak (?) position, I was not able to ...... their illegal seizure.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature — scholar edition (Oxford, Black/Cunningham/Robson/Zólyomi).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Scholarly note
Composition c.3.1.11.1 in the ETCSL catalogue. Sumerian literary text reconstructed from multiple cuneiform manuscripts, the great majority Old Babylonian (c. 1900–1600 BCE). Translation reproduced from the ETCSL edition.
Attribution
Image: .
Translation excerpted from ETCSL c.3.1.11.1: Letter from Ur-dun to Shulgi about the purchase of cedar resin. Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Robson, E. & Zólyomi, G. (eds.), The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.3.1.11.1.
Related tablets
Related sources
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.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.
Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.