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.
“It was confirmed by his own mouth.”
This is one of the shortest tablets in our series: five lines. It names a man, says he did some damage, and records that he admitted it.
It comes from Ur, the capital of the Third Dynasty of Ur, in what is now southern Iraq. CDLI dates it to the Ur III period, about 2100 to 2000 BC, but no year is written on it. The tablet is in the Penn Museum in Philadelphia.
Five lines
“6 oxen of the allotment fields, the field of Utu, which Lugal-duga, the ox-manager, harmed: it was confirmed by his own mouth.”
The oxen are linked to the šuku fields, land allotted to people as their share or income. The field belongs to Utu, the sun god. Lugal-duga is a nu-banda3-gu4, an “overseer of oxen”, the man in charge of plough oxen.
The verb is in-hul-a, “which he harmed” or “which he damaged”. The last line, ka-ga-na ba-an-gi-in, is literally “by his mouth it was made firm”: he confirmed it himself.
What was harmed?
The tablet allows two readings, and we can’t choose between them with confidence.
In the first, Lugal-duga harmed six oxen. He may have injured them, overworked them, or let them come to harm. As their overseer, he was responsible for them.
In the second, the damage was done to the field of Utu, perhaps by the six oxen in his care, for instance by trampling or grazing a crop. Then “6 oxen” would say what did the damage, not what suffered it.
Either way, the point of the record is the same. The responsible man admitted it.
What the tablet doesn’t tell us
We don’t know what Lugal-duga actually did, or whether the oxen survived.
We don’t know what followed. The tablet records no payment and no penalty.
We don’t know who wrote it down, or for whom: the temple that held the field, the office that managed the oxen, or a court.
And we don’t know the year.
Admissions on clay
Admissions are a recurring thread in this series. In The Moon God’s Donkeys, a man confesses after two donkeys of the moon god go missing. In Dirt on the Gardeners, two gardeners make sworn confessions.
Those tablets are longer and add witnesses, oaths or guarantors. This one is bare. Here we are speculating, but it reads like a note made at the moment the admission was given, to be used later when the damage was settled.
The phrase “by his own mouth” is the heart of it. Whatever happened to the oxen or the field, the record rests on Lugal-duga’s own words, not on a witness.
The tablet in full (our translation)
Front: 6 oxen of the allotment fields (?), field of Utu, which Lugal-duga, the ox-manager, harmed:
Back: it was confirmed by his own mouth.
How we read it
Key lines in transliteration: 6(disz) gu4 GAN2 szuku-ra, “6 oxen of the allotment fields”; lugal-du10-ga nu-banda3-gu4-ke4 in-hul-a, “which Lugal-duga, the ox-manager, harmed”; and ka-ga-na ba-an-gi-in, “it was confirmed by his own mouth”.
Uncertain: whether the oxen or the field were harmed; the exact sense of “allotment fields” here; and what kind of harm is meant.
Our confidence: medium. The words are clear; what they describe is ambiguous.
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 (UET 3, 1937, hand copies of Ur III tablets from Ur). Dates use the conventional middle chronology and are approximate.