Index of translations of Sumerian tablets
Sumerian clay tablets that, as far as we could check, had no published English translation. We translate them ourselves. The page linked above is the index of the series. A new tablet is a new row there, not a list copied into every story.
All translations are new and unofficial, made from transliterations on the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), and may contain errors. Tablet images are credited to the holding institutions and CDLI. Dates use the conventional middle chronology and are approximate.
In the twelfth month of a year the scribe didn’t record, the way-station at Girsu, in what is now southern Iraq, fed a small crowd of travellers. Two men had come in from Susa. An envoy was heading for Sabum. A runner had arrived from Urua.
And then two entries that stop you. A man named Lagipum was given flour for four days in the city and more for the road, because he had gone to catch the runaway female workers of the palace. And thirteen men were fed two litres of flour each. The scribe’s description is brief: “they are captured Elamites of Huhnuri”.
A day at the way-station
This tablet belongs to the large family of Girsu “messenger texts”, records of food handed out to people travelling on official business. Such texts are described as “the most numerous administrative typology of that period”, and many of them concern the road to and from Susa, in Elam (today’s south-western Iran).
Our list follows the usual pattern: an amount of flour, a name, a title, and where the person was going or coming from. Adalal, “son of the captain”, and Dada, “the chief gendarme”, get 5 litres each, “coming from Susa”. Igure, “the envoy”, gets 10 litres for two days in the city and 5 for the road, “going to Sabum”. Šu-Utu, “the runner”, gets 2 litres, “coming from Urua”.
Sent after the runaways
Then: “20 litres of flour for 4 days in the city; 20 litres of flour for the road: Lagipum, the ukul, who went to [a place name] to catch the runaway female workers of the palace.”
His title, ukul, is a profession, but we can’t say exactly what kind. The place he went to is partly damaged and we can’t read it with confidence.
The word for the women is geme2, the usual term for dependent female workers. Lagipum’s ration is the largest single allowance on the list.
Thirteen men from Huhnuri
The last entries concern a runner named Abuni. He gets 2 litres himself. Then: “13 men, 2 litres of flour each: they are captured Elamites of Huhnuri, via Abuni, the runner, coming from Adamšah.”
The word for “captured” is dab5-ba, literally “seized”. The detail the tablet does give is their ration: two litres of flour each, the smallest amount on the list, the same as a lone runner’s.
What the tablet doesn’t tell us
We don’t know how many women had fled. Sumerian doesn’t mark the plural here, so it could have been one woman or several.
We don’t know whether Lagipum found them, or what happened if he did. We don’t know why they ran.
We don’t know why the thirteen men were seized. The tablet doesn’t call them prisoners of war or slaves. War, a raid, flight: all are possible, and the tablet gives no hint.
And we don’t know the year. The scribe wrote only the month, Še-illa.
Huhnuri and Ur’s eastern wars
Huhnuri was a real target of Ur’s eastern campaigns. King Amar-Suen named his seventh year for destroying “Bitum-rabium, Jabru, their territories and Huhnuri”. The kings of Ur controlled Susa for much of this period.
Here we are speculating, but it’s tempting to connect our thirteen captives to that campaign. Because this tablet has no year, though, we can’t. They might have been seized years before or after, or in circumstances that had nothing to do with a war.
J. N. Reid’s study “Runaways and Fugitive-Catchers during the Third Dynasty of Ur” argues that “the boundaries between slaves and other lower-stratum individuals were fluid and poorly defined”. This clay slip captures that world in miniature: a man sent to bring back the palace’s runaway women, and a group of seized foreigners fed on the lowest ration.
The tablet in full (our translation)
Front: 5 litres of zi3-gu flour: Adalal, son of the captain; 5 litres: Dada, the chief gendarme; coming from Susa. 10 litres of flour for 2 days in the city; 5 litres of flour for the road: Igure, the envoy, going to Sabum. 2 litres: Šu-Utu, the runner,
Back: coming from Urua. 20 litres of flour for 4 days in the city; 20 litres of flour for the road: Lagipum, the ukul, who went to Sahar(?)-HAR-šinig to catch the runaway female workers of the palace. 2 litres: Abuni, the runner. 13 men, 2 litres of flour each: they are captured Elamites of Huhnuri, via Abuni, the runner,
Left edge: coming from Adamšah. Month: Še-illa.
How we read it
Key lines in transliteration: geme2 zah3 e2-gal dab5-dab5-de3 gen-na, “who went to catch the runaway female workers of the palace”, and elam dab5-ba hu-hu-nu-<ru>{ki}-me, “they are captured Elamites of Huhnuri”. Zah3 is “to flee”, dab5 “to seize”, e2-gal “palace”. The editor restores a missing sign in the name Huhnuri, shown by the angle brackets.
Uncertain: the damaged place name Lagipum was sent to (sahar?{ki#}-HAR-{gesz}szinig{ki}); whether one woman or several had fled; the exact meaning of ukul. We give Adamšah as written, without trying to place it on a map.
Our confidence: medium-high. The formulas are standard; one place name is not readable.
This translation is new and unofficial, made from the CDLI transliteration, and may contain errors. “Untranslated” means we found no translation on CDLI or in the tablet’s publication history (a hand copy in RTC, 1903). Specialist studies of messenger texts and of runaways (Notizia’s Nisaba 22; Reid 2015) may quote it; we haven’t checked. Dates use the conventional middle chronology and are approximate.
Further reading
- CDLI artifact page for P128507
- P. Notizia, I testi dei messaggeri da Girsu-Lagaš della Terza Dinastia di Ur (Nisaba 22)
- Zhi Li, Support for Messengers: Road Stations in the Ur III Period (2021)
- J. N. Reid, “Runaways and Fugitive-Catchers during the Third Dynasty of Ur” (2015)
- Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Susa ii. History during the Elamite period” (note: uses a different dating system)
- Wikipedia, “Third Dynasty of Ur”
- ePSD2, the electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary
- Oracc, Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses