Position in chronology
Orient 55, 163 no. 9
About this tablet
A small clay receipt from Umma in southern Iraq, written about 2035 BCE during the reign of King Šu-Sîn of Ur. It records 44 shekels of copper (about two-thirds of a mina) handed over by an official named Lu-kalla and debited to the account of a man called Gududu — the kind of running-account bookkeeping that the Ur III state ran on. The tablet was validated by the seal of the scribe Ur-nungal, whose seal legend names his father Ur-Šara, an archivist, and declares Ur-nungal the king's servant. The date formula commemorates Šu-Sîn's military campaign against the highland land of Zabšali in the Zagros.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Received from Lu-kalla: 44 shekels of copper, entered as a debit against Gududu's account. Certified under the seal of Ur-nungal. Dated to the year King Šu-Sîn destroyed the land of Zabšali. The seal itself reads: "Šu-Sîn, mighty king, king of Ur, king of the four quarters — Ur-nungal, scribe, son of Ur-Šara the archivist, is your servant."
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2/3 mana 4 shekels of copper, from Lu-kalla, charged to the account of Gududu. Sealed tablet of Ur-nungal. Year: "Šu-Sîn, the king, destroyed the land of Zabšali." (Seal inscription:) Šu-Sîn, mighty king, king of Ur, king of the four quarters: Ur-nungal, scribe, son of Ur-Šara the archivist, is your servant.
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
2/3(disz) ma-na 4(disz) gin2 uruda ki lu2-kal-la-ta ugu2 gu-du-du ba-a-gar kiszib3 ur-nun-gal mu szu-suen lugal-e ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul szu-suen lugal kal-ga lugal uri5-ma lugal an-ub-da limmu2-ba ur-nun-gal dub-sar dumu ur-szara2 pisan-dub-ba-ka ARAD2-zu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Orient 55, 163 no. 9. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y6 — Land of Zabšali destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: WCMA 20.1.09 (Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P424376). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.