Index of English Translations of Sumerian Clay 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.
“1 slave woman, Annaziummi by name, and Amat-Suen, her daughter: Ilšu-ibbišu bought them from Sîn-eribam.”
A sale from Old Babylonian Ur. A woman and her daughter are sold together, for a single price, with an oath that the seller will stand by any claim.
The tablet comes from Ur, in what is now southern Iraq. It is dated to the month Šu-numun of a year of Rim-Sin of Larsa in which temples of Enki and of Nine-nimma were built, conventionally around 1815 BC. That is more than two centuries after the Ur III tablets that dominate this series.
The sale
“1 slave woman (geme), Annaziummi by name, and Amat-Suen her daughter: from Sîn-eribam, Ilšu-ibbišu bought them. ⅓ mina 4 shekels of silver he weighed out as her full price. Sîn-eribam will answer for any claim concerning the slave woman and her daughter. He swore by the king’s name.”
⅓ mina and 4 shekels is 24 shekels. The price is written as one sum for both people. The daughter’s age is not given.
Witnesses
Ten men witness the sale, including a barber, a scribe, and others identified by father’s name or title. Their seals are referred to as a group: “seal of the witnesses.”
What the tablet doesn’t tell us
We don’t know how old Amat-Suen was.
We don’t know why mother and daughter were sold together: whether that protected the child, raised the price, or simply reflected how they were already held.
We don’t know Sîn-eribam’s or Ilšu-ibbišu’s wider business.
And we don’t know what became of them after the sale.
After Ur III
Most of this series stays inside the Third Dynasty of Ur. This tablet is later, from the age of Rim-Sin of Larsa, when Ur was under Larsa’s rule. The legal language has shifted, but the human fact is plain: a mother and daughter sold on one contract, for one weight of silver.
UET 5 published the hand copy; we found no full English translation of this tablet in its publication history on CDLI. As always, we have not read machine translations.
The tablet in full (our translation)
Front: 1 slave woman, Annaziummi by name, and Amat-Suen her daughter: from Sîn-eribam, Ilšu-ibbišu bought them. ⅓ mina 4 shekels of silver he weighed out as her full price. Sîn-eribam will answer for any claim concerning the slave woman and her daughter. He swore by the king’s name.
Back: Before Šeš-bani; Ibalut; Ilšu-bani the …; Šamaš-nasir of Šu-Ninsun; Nawirum-ili; Nanna-medu; Ubar-Šamaš son of Ahu-waqar; Appaya son of Ur-Ninazu; Ubarrum the barber; Ilšu-nasir the scribe. Seal of the witnesses. Month: Šu-numun. Year: Rim-Sin the king built the temple of Enki in Ur and the temple of Nine-nimma in the temple of Ninmarki.
How we read it
Key lines in transliteration: 1(disz) geme2 an-na-zi-um-mi mu-ni u3 a-ma-at-{d}suen dumu-munus-a-ni, “1 slave woman, Annaziummi by name, and Amat-Suen her daughter”; sa10 til-la-a-ni-sze3, “as her full price”; and inim gal2-la … in-na-gub-bu, “he will answer for any claim”.
Uncertain: one witness’s title (|KA.KI|); and whether the silver figure was meant as a single combined price only (we read it that way).
Our confidence: high for the sale itself. The hand copy is clear on the main clauses.
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 5, 1953 (Figulla and Martin), hand copies and catalogue of Old Babylonian texts from Ur; no English translation found on CDLI for this tablet). Dates use the conventional middle chronology and are approximate.
For the full description of sources, method, uncertainties, dating conventions, limitations, and how to report corrections, see About the Translations and Methodology.