Cuneiform Tablet: contract to transport grain

Creator

Creator Biography

Ur-Namnun, Scribe

Preview

Creation Date

2046–2044 BCE

Geography

Tell Johka, Iraq

Culture

Sumerian

Medium

Incised and impressed clay

Dimensions

1 3/4 × 1 1/2 × 1/3 in. (4.2 × 4 × 1.1 cm)

0.89 oz. (25.2 g)

Credit Line

Gift in Loving Memory of Boris Blick & Judith Rosenbloom Blick by their daughter Sarah Blick, 2024

Accession Number

2015.157

Provenance

We do not know when and where Boris Blick purchased this tablet, but he acquired a total of three at some point in the late 1990s and early 2000s. One of these tablets was purchased from a mail order antiquities catalogue called the Worldwide Treasure Bureau and two from Akron-based art dealer by the name of Bruce Ferrini. Ferrini claimed that his tablets came from Afghanistan. While it is not impossible for his tablets to have originated in parts of Afghanistan, it is more likely that they originated from Iraq at some point and passed through an intermediary dealer in Afghanistan. An Iraqi provenience of this tablet is confirmed by the inscription, which mentions the movement of goods from Ka'ida to Umma, both ancient Sumerian cities in southern Mesopotamia. The provenance is murky, and we cannot more clearly track their movement over the four millennia between the time when the clay hardened to their appearance in the Blick-Harris Study Collection.

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Transliteration:

Obverse:

1. 63 geme2 ud 1-[sze3]

2. geme2 kikken-na

3. ugula ur-{d}nin-t[u]

4. ka-id2-d[a-ta]

5. umma{ki}-sze3.

Reverse

6. sze zi-ga u3 / sze-g[a6?-(ga2?)]

7. kiszib nam-sza3-t[am?]

8. ur-{d}nam2-nun-k[a?]

9. iti e2-iti-6

10. mu {d}amar-[{d}suen…].

Seal legend:

1. ur-{d}nam2-nun-ka

2. dub-sar

3. dumu ur-{d}nin-zu

4. sa12-du5-ka

Translation:

63 women workdays

Female millers

Supervisor: Ur-Nintu

From Ka'ida

To Umma

Removing and carrying grain

Official seal (of)

Ur-Namnun

Month: Six-month house

Year: Amar-[Sin (became king)]

Seal Legend:

Ur-Namnun

Scribe

Son of Ur-Ninzu

Land registrar

Translation by Ellie Westfall (’27) for Summer Scholars 2025.

References

Franjola, Sacha L. and Brad Hostetler. "Mesopotamia in the Midwest: Cultural heritage law, ethical debates, and the cuneiform tablets in the Blick-Harris Study Collection." John W. Adams Summer Scholars Program in Socio-Legal Studies (2024).

https://digital.kenyon.edu/summerlegalprogram/19

Description

Written in the Sumerian language, this cuneiform tablet comes from Umma in the Ur III period. Umma was a prolific city-state in Sumer, or modern day Iraq, specifically Tell-Johka, Iraq . This tablet would have been shaped by a scribe’s hands into a small hand-held object in which to inscribe information, accounts, receipts, and lists. In fact, traces of the scribe’s fingerprints are still visible along the upper edge of the tablet. It was rolled with a scribal seal (hence the smaller background signs) and then incised with wedges by a reed.

Due to the remarkable preservation, despite some non-critical missing pieces, both the obverse and reverse are legible and understandable. The tablet records 63 women workdays of female millers under the supervision of Ur-Nintu. They removed and carried the grain from Ka’ida (literally “mouth of river”) to Umma, a journey that is about 6 miles upstream. Thankfully, the scribe has generously provided us with both the exact month and year of this tablet, as well as his name and father. Our scribe is named Ur-Namnun, son of Ur-Ninzu, and he records that this transaction happened in the six-month house, the year Amar-Sin became king. We can place this to exactly 2046 BCE in the 8th month of the Umma calendar.

Over 30,000 texts come from Umma, most of them being economic and reports similar to this tablet. The scribe, Ur-Namnun, is mentioned in 29 other tablets. One particular tablet, in the Montserrat Abbey Museum in Barcelona (https://cdli.earth/artifacts/119807), is almost identical to this, the only difference being female weavers instead of millers. Another remarkably similar tablet is at the British Museum (https://cdli.earth/artifacts/208584) and it accounts for female agricultural work.

The color of this tablet may not align with how we envision cuneiform tablets. In fact, it even appears as, and feels like, stone. Yet, the presence of the stamped legend (before the incised writing) and inclusion of ancient fingerprints points us to discount stone as a possibility. One study conducted by Waseda University in Tokyo found activity of manganese-oxidizing microbes in clay from Umma, amongst other city-states, during the Ur III period. They concluded that the observed blackness (and consequential hardness) was a product of manganese precipitation on the surfaces of these tablets. Other possible explanations are clay variation, firing variations, or inadvertent heat or fire.

Work Cited

Uchida, Etsuo, and Ryota Watanabe. “Blackening of the Surfaces of Mesopotamian Clay Tablets Due to Manganese Precipitation.” Archaeological Discovery 02, no. 04 (2014): 107–16. https://doi.org/10.4236/ad.2014.24012.

Ellie Westfall (’27) for Summer Scholars 2025 with research by Dr. Gabriel Rabanal-Bolaños.

__________

This small stone stone before us represents millennia of written language. Cuneiform was a written language developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia in around 3500-3000 B.C.E. The language continually evolved for about three millennia. First the Sumerian language consisted of images and then through time translated these images into thin crossing lines. The word for “cunei” comes from the Latin word “cuneus” meaning wedge, referring to its wedge style lettering. The words were carved into the tablet by a blunt reed. The clay tablet before us holds hundreds of these lines on a very small surface. The characters look like they are layered upon other words or patterns. Perhaps this surface was used for more than one time using two different versions of the cuneiform. Towards the bottom righthand corner we see a darker more linear form while in the center of the piece we see a more roach inscription with larger forms. Two pieces of the stone are missing. Despite its unassuming appearance, this small stone represents the bedrock of our literary society as it contains some of the earliest evidences of writing. This stone has deteriorated through the years showing its rich history. It shows three different colored textures. The inside, where the piece has broken off, has a light brown tint, which also shows through underneath some of the engravings. On the edge of the break, there is a darker rust colored stone. The front of the stone is smoothed over from time and has a dark brown stain. Its image has been preserved and saved for thousands of years. Photographs of such a small object cannot capture the true presence of the stone. It is a ruin and an icon. It has decayed but the carvings and designs still remain today. Cuneiform looks more like a work of art rather than a language to our modern eye. (im)permanence questions why we save and collect objects that we do not have personal relationships with. Why do we keep and collect historical objects like this one? Is it for our individual or collective memory?

Anastasia Inciardi ('19) for the exhibition (im)permanence (Spring 2017)