Position in chronology
NRVN 1, 142
About this tablet
This small clay tablet from Nippur records a barley loan made during the Ur III period, roughly 2100–2000 BCE. Ur-Šulpa'e advanced a gur of barley to a man named Lu-Esikil, with the interest rate spelled out in the standard Mesopotamian units of gur, barig, and ban2. The document is dated by a year-name commemorating the destruction of the city of Simurrum, a well-known military campaign of the Ur III kings, and closes with the name of a second man, Lu-Eshikil son of Sipa-dari, likely a witness or the scribe overseeing the transaction. It is an ordinary piece of ancient credit paperwork — the kind of everyday record that shows how grain functioned as both food and currency in Sumerian society.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ur-Šulpa'e lent one gur of barley to Lu-Esikil, who agreed to repay it with interest — one gur, one barig, and four ban2 (roughly a third again on top of the loan, the standard Ur III rate). Lu-Esikil formally took receipt of the grain. The transaction is dated to the month of Ab-e, in the year that Simurrum was destroyed — a well-known Ur III military campaign used here simply to date the document. The record closes with the name Lu-Eshikil, son of Sipa-dari, presumably serving as witness or scribe to the loan.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(aš) gur barley, interest: 1(aš) gur 1(barig) 4(ban2) per (gur) — from Ur-Šulpa'e, Lu-Esikil received. Month: Ab-e. Year: Simurrum was destroyed. Lu-Eshikil, son of Sipa-dari(?).
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 masz2 1(asz) gur 1(barig) 4(ban2)-ta ki ur-szul-pa-e3-ta lu2-e2-sikil szu ba-ti iti ab-e3 mu si-mu-ru-um ba-hul-a lu2#-esz3-sikil# dumu sipa-da#?-ri2#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — NRVN 1, 142. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šulgi y23 — Simurrum destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Ist Ni 00203 (cast: CBS 09752 ?) (Arkeoloji Müzeleri, Istanbul, Turkey) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P122358). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.