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.
“For the swearing of an oath: the overseer of the runaways.”
This tablet records almost nothing: two litres of flour. But it says what the flour was for, and who was involved.
It comes from Umma, in what is now southern Iraq, around 2038 BC, the ninth year of King Amar-Suen. It was issued by a man named Ur-Šulpa’e and carries the words “sealed document of the governor”.
Seven lines
The first two lines give the flour: 1 litre of eša, a fine flour, and 1 litre of dabin, a coarser meal, usually translated “semolina”.
The third line gives the purpose: nam-erim2 ku5-ra2, “for the cutting of an oath”. That is the ordinary phrase for swearing a solemn oath.
The fourth line names a person, or rather a post: ugula lu2 zah3-ne, “the overseer of the runaways”. The word lu2 zah3 means “fugitive”, and -ne makes it plural.
The fifth line gives the source, “from Ur-Šulpa’e”. On the back are the seal note and the year: “the en-priestess of Gaeš was installed”, the name for Amar-Suen’s ninth year.
Why flour for an oath?
Oaths in this period were sworn by the king or by a god, and they were serious acts. Fine flour like eša turns up in offerings, and it is likely the two litres were used in some small rite around the swearing. The tablet doesn’t describe it, so neither can we.
Other Umma tablets show oaths at the centre of disputes. In Once Inim-Utu Swears, a whole sale hangs on a witness’s oath. Here, for once, we see the office paying for the occasion.
The overseer of the runaways
The title is the most interesting thing on the tablet. Runaways were a constant problem for the Ur III state, and the records name men sent to catch them. Here there seems to be an overseer for the runaways themselves: a man in charge of fugitives who had been brought back, or of the effort to find them.
The line is grammatically loose. The overseer may be the man who swore. The oath may also have been about him, or about his runaways. We can’t tell which.
J. N. Reid, who has studied runaways in this period, writes that “the boundaries between slaves and other lower-stratum individuals were fluid and poorly defined”. The tablet doesn’t say who the runaways were, and we don’t guess.
What the tablet doesn’t tell us
We don’t know who swore the oath, or what it was about.
We don’t know the overseer’s name. The scribe gives only his title.
We don’t know where the oath was sworn, or before whom.
And we don’t know who Ur-Šulpa’e was beyond the man who issued the flour. It was a common name in Umma.
The tablet in full (our translation)
Front: 1 litre of eša flour, 1 litre of dabin flour, for the swearing of an oath: the overseer of the runaways. From Ur-Šulpa’e.
Back: Sealed document of the governor. Year: the en-priestess of Gaeš was installed.
How we read it
Key lines in transliteration: nam-erim2 ku5-ra2, “for the cutting of an oath”, and ugula lu2 zah3-ne, “the overseer of the runaways”, where ugula is “overseer” and lu2 zah3 “fugitive”.
Uncertain: how the oath and the overseer are connected, since the scribe gives no case ending that settles it; and what the flour was used for.
Our confidence: medium. Every word is clear; the relation between the lines is 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 tablet’s publication history (BPOA 7, 2009, transliterations, and a catalogue entry in CBCY 3, 2001). Dates use the conventional middle chronology and are approximate.