Position in chronology
NRVN 1, 148
About this tablet
A short loan contract from Nippur, written near the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur (around 2025 BCE). A man named Ea-šar borrows four gur of barley — roughly 1,200 liters — from Ur-Šulpa'e, at the standard Sumerian interest rate of one barig four ban2 per gur, about 33 percent. The scribe dates it precisely: the sixth day of the month Udru, in the year King Ibbi-Suen destroyed the city of Simurrum. Documents like this are the ordinary paperwork of Mesopotamian credit, and their year-names double as a skeleton for the chronology of the whole period.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ea-šar has taken out a barley loan of four gur from Ur-Šulpa'e, at interest — one barig and four ban2 for every gur borrowed, the customary third. He received the grain on the sixth day of the month of Udru, in the year King Ibbi-Suen sacked Simurrum.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 gur of barley, as an interest-bearing loan. The interest is 1 barig [4 ban2] per 1 gur. From Ur-Šulpa'e, Ea-šar has received (it). Month: Udru, day 6 having passed. Year: Ibbi-Suen the king destroyed Simurrum.
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
4(asz) sze gur ur5-sze3 masz2 1(asz) gur 1(barig) [4(ban2)-ta] ki ur-szul-pa-e3-ta e2-a-szar szu ba-ti iti udru u4 6(disz) ba-zal mu i-bi2-suen lugal-e si-mu-ru-um mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — NRVN 1, 148. 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 00058 (cast: CBS 09740 ?) (Arkeoloji Müzeleri, Istanbul, Turkey) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P122364). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.
The oldest surviving law code in human history. The principle that the state — not the wronged family — defines and enforces justice begins here.