Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/3, pl. 223, Bod S 182
About this tablet
This is a short administrative loan record from Umma in the Ur III period (roughly 21st century BCE). It records one gur of barley — reckoned by the bronze-standard measure and earmarked for flour — advanced as an interest-bearing loan from a man named Ur-lisi to a debtor, Lugal-gigire son of Ur-Ištaran. Such 'še ur5-ra' (barley loan) tablets are extremely common in the Umma archive, showing the routine credit transactions — often barley or silver advanced against future repayment — that underpinned everyday economic life in a major Sumerian provincial city. The document is sealed and dated by month and a (now broken) year name, with a final line naming a carpenter, Ur-li, son of Lugal-[...], likely part of the seal's own inscribed legend.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a barley loan: one gur of barley (measured by the bronze-standard gur, intended for flour) was lent out from Ur-lisi to Lugal-gigire, son of Ur-Ištaran. The transaction was sealed by Ur-enna the carpenter, and the record states that the loan document is officially on file. It is dated to the month of Dumuzi, in a year named for some event involving 'the son of the king' — but the rest of that year name is broken and lost. At the bottom, the tablet also names Ur-li the carpenter, son of Lugal-[...], probably identifying the owner of the seal actually impressed on the tablet.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(aš) gur barley, royal (measure) — barley of the loan, (for) flour, by the bronze gur (measure), from Ur-lisi, in the name of Lugal-gigire, son of Ur-Ištaran — sealed by Ur-en(na), the carpenter; it is at hand (booked). Month: "Dumuzi", year: "the son of the king ..." [broken] Ur-li, the carpenter, son of Lugal-[...].
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(asz) sze gur lugal sze ur5-ra zi3-da gur-zabar-ta ki ur-li9-si4-ta mu lugal-gigir-re dumu ur-isztaran-sze3 kiszib3 ur-en3 nagar i3-gal2 iti dumu-zi mu dumu lugal ur-li nagar dumu lugal-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAICAB 1/3, pl. 223, Bod S 182. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Bod S 182 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P249085). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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