CUNES 52-04-082

~2050 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·P325906

About this tablet

This is a small Ur III-period letter-order, one of thousands of short administrative directives that circulated between officials, merchants, and estate managers around 2100–2000 BCE in southern Mesopotamia. It opens with the standard formula 'Speak to Šu-damu,' instructing him about a field and a quantity of goods, and closes with a firm instruction that the matter be handed over to a merchant named Zuma and to a man named Lu-Šalim, with a warning that the agreement is not to be broken. Letters like this offer a rare glimpse of the everyday business language — brisk, formulaic, and legally pointed — used to move commodities and settle obligations in the Ur III bureaucratic economy.

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

Written in modern English

Tell Šu-damu: regarding the field [the next few lines are too damaged to read, but they concerned a field and some quantity or transaction]. Nothing is left over or set aside [beyond what has already been accounted for]. Hand it over to Zuma the merchant and to Lu-Šalim — make sure it's given to them. And don't let anyone back out of this agreement.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

To Šu-damu — speak! The field, ...... [broken] ...... field ...... [broken] ...... [broken] ...... [broken] There is no remaining ...... that has been set/placed (there). To Zuma, the merchant, (and) Lu-Šalim, let it be given. Let the matter not be reneged upon (let the word not be turned back).

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 — Sonnet 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

szu-da-mu#
u3-na-a-du11#
a#-sza3# ku-x-[...]
x GAN2 x [...]
x-ga-x [...]
x x-x
x tak4 ba-gar-na-me nu-un-gal2
zu#-ma-a dam-gar3
lu2#-sza-lim-e
he2-na-ab-szum2-mu
inim-be2 na-mi-gur-re

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUNES 52-04-082. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: CUNES 52-04-082 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from uncertain (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P325906). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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