Position in chronology
Šulgi 96 / CDLI Seals 005318 (CDLI Seals 005318 (composite))
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(1) Ur-Suen, the military governor of Unug and Dēr: Ur-Enki, the city elder, is your servant.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions — scholar edition (Vienna).
Why it matters
Seal impression of a military governor of Uruk and Dēr attesting the administrative hierarchy binding provincial officials to the Ur III crown under Šulgi.
Scholarly note
Sumerian royal inscription, published in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions (ETCSRI) by Gábor Zólyomi and collaborators. Translation reproduced from the ETCSRI edition. ORACC text Q001727.
Attribution
Image: HMA 9-02659 (Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P135947). source
Translation excerpted from Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions (ETCSRI), University of Vienna, edited by Gábor Zólyomi et al. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/etcsri/Q001727/.
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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.