Tablet

Sumerian administration documents from the city of Umma “Letter order listing wages(?) to be given from the gur zid2-da to different reed workers.” Translation: Obv: (Tell him:) (1)1 r[oyal gur], 3 (barig) of b[arley]: (2)Ur-nigar; (3)1 (royal gur), 3 (barig of barley): ¯Suzu; (4)1 (royal gur), 3 (barig of barley): Puzur-Mam; (5)1 (royal gur), 3 (barig of barley): Ur-gigir; (6)1 (royal gur), 3 (barig of barley): Ur-e¸sdam; (7)2 (royal gur of barley): Haha¸ra; (8)1 (royal gur), 3 (barig of barley): Lu-ebgal; (9)1 (royal gur), 3 (barig of barley): Lugal-sur; (10)2 (royal gur of barley): Ur-U[tu];
Rev: (11)2 (royal gur of barley): Lugal-za[gesi]; (12)1 (royal gur), 3 (barig of barley): Beli. (13)– (14)They are reed workers; (15)from the vessel for flour, (16)he shall give it to them.

Ex. case no 7b.
The city of Umma, situated in the middle of the Ur III central core, was one of the most important Mesopotamian cities in the third millennium BC. Although the city was never officially excavated, thousands of Neo-Sumerian tablets from Umma are today found in different museums or private collections. It is indeed not an easy task to conclude to what extent the published texts from these collections are to be regarded as representative for the city’s official business, but we can without doubt conclude that the city must have served as a major supplier of grain, animal products, wood, reed and related materials in the Ur III period.
Our text belongs to a group of texts that can be described as administrative orders requesting a recipient to perform an action. These texts, usually referred to as “letter orders”, were solely used for transactions within the sphere of official bureaucratic practice and there is nothing in these documents reminding us of the intimate personal communications so often found in other types of Mesopotamian letters. The text belongs to the rather rare examples of letter orders without the standard introduction formula. Therefore, the recipient and the sender of the letter remain unknown. We can be quite certain that the complete addressee, as well as the identity of the sender, were written on the broken and – for us – lost clay “envelope”. Since the letter, like most letters in the Ur III period, lacks dating formula, it is difficult to conclude its exact date, but the structure and subject of the letter imply that its origin was the city of Umma. The mention of the royal gur (c. 300 liters) in the first line speaks against a date before the middle of the reign of ¯Sulgi. In an important year account from Umma dated to AS 4 dealing with wood and reed objects, a certain Lu2-eb-gal is mentioned working as an ad-KUB4 in the city of A-KA-sal4ki, an important district in the vicinity of Umma. Since also the workers Ur-nigarxgar and Ur-gi¸sgigir are mentioned in similar contexts in the same account, it seems possible that this year account from Umma and our letter order are partly listing the same ad-KUB4 workers. This might perhaps suggest an approximate date of our text to the reign of the king Amar-Suen.