NRVN 1, 138

~2028 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·P122354

About this tablet

A small interest-bearing barley loan recorded on a clay tablet at Nippur, in the last decades of the Ur III empire. A man named Šu-Enlil borrows 4 gur of barley (roughly 1,200 liters) from Ur-Šulpa'e at the standard Sumerian rate of one-third — 1 barig 4 ban2 of interest on every gur. The scribe dates it precisely: the twentieth day of the month of seed-sowing, in the year King Ibbi-Suen destroyed the highland city of Simurrum, which is his third regnal year, about 2026 BCE. Documents like this are the ordinary credit paperwork of a bureaucratic state, and the year-name incidentally preserves a military campaign otherwise known only from such dating formulas.

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

Written in modern English

Šu-Enlil borrowed 4 gur of barley from Ur-Šulpa'e, at interest of 1 barig 4 ban2 for every gur — a third again on top of the principal. He took delivery of the grain on the twentieth day of the month of sowing, 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 a loan; interest: 1 barig 4 ban2 per 1 gur; from Ur-Šulpa'e Šu-Enlil has received. Month: Šu-numun ("Seed-sowing"), day 20 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
szu-en-lil2
szu ba-ti
iti szu-numun-a
u4 2(u) ba-zal
mu i-bi2-suen lugal si-mu-ru-um mu-hul-a

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — NRVN 1, 138. No scholarly translation has been published; 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 00206 (cast: CBS 09719 ?) (Arkeoloji Müzeleri, Istanbul, Turkey) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P122354). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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