Cuneiform Collection – SMM 10

For transliteration, translations, and discussions on the individual texts, click on the links below.

Transliteration:	Translation:
obv. 1. 6 udu ú	1-3. Six grass-fed sheep, one goat, slaughtered,
2. 1 máš
3. BA - ug7
4. u4 22.kamu-un-ša6-mu	4. day 22,
5. ki Ur-kù-nun-na-TA lo. e. (blank)	5-7. From Urkununna, Shulgi-urumu received.
rev. 6. dŠul-gi-uru-mu
7. šu-ba-ti
8. gìr u-la-al du[b-sa]r	8. Control – Hulal, the scribe.
9. iti ezen dŠul-gi	9. Month of the festival of Shulgi,
10. mu dŠu-dEN.ZU	10-13. Year Shu-Suen, king of Ur, smote the land of Zabshali.
11. lugal Uríki ma-ke4
12. ma-DA Za-ab-ša-
u.e. 13. liki mu-UL
left edge: 7 udu	left edge: 7 sheep

Click on picture for larger view

Discussion

In format and content this receipt is very much like SMM 3, which was written eleven years earlier, each of these two tablets records a single delivery of six ovines and one caprid within the royal cattle bureau at Puzrish-Dagan, and on both tablets the total number of animals delivered is written on the left edge (the goat is lumped together with the sheep, as was commonly done, thus “7 sheep” in SMM 10). However, while SMM 3 records the receipt of live animals, SMM 10 records the receipt of slaughtered ones – probably destined for the kitchen – and uses a different verb. Also, an additional “controlling” functionary is involved in SMM 10, reflecting a development in administrative procedure over time.

The three individuals named in SMM 10 were members of the administrative staff of Puzrish-Dagan, and all three are attested together in other tablets, performing exactly the same functions.* Urkununna, the official who delivered the animals in this record, had a long career at Puzrish-Dagan, from the last years of Shulgi's reign to the early years of Ibbi-Suen's reign.**

* For example, M. Sigrist, Neo-Sumerian Texts from the Royal Ontario Museum, I (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1995), no. 143; idem, Tablettes du Princeton Theological Seminary: Époque d'Ur III (Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund, 10; Philadelphia, 1990), no. 114.

** See M. Sigrist, Drehem (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1992), pp. 269-272; and in the increase in the use of “controlling” officials during Shu-Suen's reign, ibid., pp. 59-60.