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.
“One goat in the city. One goat for the road.”
Those two lines, pressed into clay at Girsu in southern Iraq some four thousand years ago, are about as close as an accounts tablet gets to a travel diary. The goats were for “the Elamites of Si’u”, and they went out with an envoy named Dingir-kal “when he went to Si’u”. A few lines earlier, another envoy, Lu-banda, is setting off for Susa, the Elamite capital, in what is now south-western Iran.
A ledger of comings and goings
This tablet is a small expenditure record: animals given out, who handled them, and why. It lists four entries.
First, one sheep for the goddess Ninmar, linked to something of the king’s called ša3-ge kar2, a phrase we can’t confidently translate. A cupbearer named Šu-Utu was responsible.
Second, one sheep and two goats as “an offering for the sesame-oil boat”, handled by Lu-banda, the envoy, “when he went to Susa”. We don’t know exactly what the rite involved. Perhaps it marked the departure of a boat carrying sesame oil, but that is a guess.
Third, our two goats: one “in the city” and one “for the road”. They were for “the Elamites of Si’u”, handled by Dingir-kal, the envoy, “when he went to Si’u”. This entry is dated to the tenth month of the Girsu calendar.
Fourth, one sheep and one goat for a balag “that was set up”. A balag was a large drum or harp, and the word can also mean a lament. This entry was handled by a man named Ezimu and is dated to month eight.
That’s the whole tablet: eight animals, four named men, two destinations in Elam.
Who were these travellers?
The envoys are called sukkal, a title that can mean “secretary” or “envoy”. Here they are clearly officials on the move.
It’s tempting to imagine the scene: one goat eaten before setting out, one taken along as food for the journey. That is the plain sense of “in the city” and “for the road”, but exactly how the animals were used is our reading.
Beyond that, we have to stop. The tablet does not say what Lu-banda’s mission to Susa was. It does not say who the Elamites of Si’u were, or why they had come. They could have been visitors of many kinds, and we won’t label them hostages, traders or anything else. And while the text tells us Si’u was home to Elamites, nobody knows today where exactly it was.
The dates hold one more small puzzle. The entries run from month 10 back to month 8, and no year is given. Either the record spans two years, or the entries were not written in calendar order.
The road between Ur and Susa
Our tablet belongs to a large family of records that scholars call “messenger texts”. The publisher of the edition that includes our tablet calls them “the most numerous administrative typology of that period”. That edition, by P. Notizia, published 200 previously unpublished examples from the British Museum and the Harvard Semitic Museum, including this one. Notizia also studied Girsu texts recording supplies for messengers on the road between Ur and Susa, among them 19 texts using the formula “from Ur to Susa” or “from Susa to Ur”.
Those journeys mattered. The kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur (about 2112 to 2004 BC) controlled Susa for a time. Later, relations soured. Ibbi-Suen, the last king of Ur, named his 14th year after a campaign against Susa. In the end, Ibbi-Suen himself was carried off as a prisoner to Elam.
Our tablet has no year, so we can’t place Lu-banda and Dingir-kal at any particular point in that story. But it lets us see, for a moment, ordinary officials and their travel rations travelling between two worlds whose relationship would end with a captive king.
The tablet in full (our translation)
Front: 1 sheep for (the goddess) Ninmar, (for) the king’s ša3-ge kar2 (meaning unclear); Šu-Utu, the cupbearer (was responsible). 1 sheep, 2 goats: offering for the sesame-oil boat, via Lu-banda, the envoy, when he went to Susa. 1 goat (consumed) in the city, 1 goat for the road: (they are for) the Elamites of Si’u, via Dingir-kal, the envoy,
Back: when he went to Si’u. Month: Amar-a’asi (month 10). 1 sheep, 1 goat (for) the balag “of the day” (?) that was set up, via Ezimu. Month: Festival of Baba (month 8).
How we read it
Key lines in transliteration: 1(disz) masz2 sza3-iri / 1(disz) masz2 kaskal-sze3 / elam si-u3{ki}-me, “1 goat in the city, 1 goat for the road: they are (for) the Elamites of Si’u”. Kaskal means “road, journey”.
Uncertain: three phrases. Ša3-ge kar2 lugal is not a known expression (possibly “the king’s wish”, possibly the name of a ritual). Siskur2 ma2 geš-i3, “offering for the sesame-oil boat”, is clear in its words but not in what was actually done. Balag u4-da gub-ba could be a drum “set up” for the day or a daily lament.
Our confidence: medium. The structure is standard; three phrases are not.
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 publication history we checked. Important caveat: the tablet’s first edition, Nisaba 22, is an Italian monograph on the messenger texts, and it may include an Italian rendering or discussion of this text. We deliberately did not consult it, so as not to be influenced by it. Dates use the conventional middle chronology and are approximate.
Further reading
- CDLI artifact page for P406567
- 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)
- Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Susa ii. History during the Elamite period” (note: uses a different dating system)
- Wikipedia, “Ibbi-Sin”
- Wikipedia, “Third Dynasty of Ur”
- ePSD2, the electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary
- Oracc, Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses