Keywords
Ur III, Hulin Collection, administrative, exercise, scribes, orthography

§1. Introduction
§1.1 The following six tablets from the time of the Ur III dynasty were acquired by the late Peter Hulin, lecturer in Assyriology at the University of Oxford. I am grateful to Linda Hulin for permission to publish the tablets here. It is not known how they were acquired, but their provenience can in most cases be established from their content. The first five tablets record transactions, the sixth is perhaps an aide-mémoire or exercise text.

§2. Transliterations, translations and commentary
§2.1. No. 1 = PH 14
Provenience: Drehem
Size: 28 × 16 × 14mm
Date: Amar-Suen 3 ix 8

§2.1a. As Maeda (1989: 73) has observed, Inta'ea was initially responsible for providing livestock to the kitchen from (at least) AS 3 ix 1. See more recently Allred (2006: 49-50). This receipt-produced only a week later-comes from the earliest phase of his long career, a summary of which is given by Sigrist (1992: 295-301).

§2.2. No. 2 = PH 18
Provenience: Drehem
Size: 40mm × 35mm × 18mm
Date: Šu-Suen 7 ix 23

§2.2a. Michalowski (2006: 52-53) has attempted a brief portrait of Ribagada. He was at this point a maškim, apparently of Amorite origin, having attained the final stage of his career as a courier. One can never be sure how many individuals lurk behind a name. Yet Ribagada is attested only in two dozen or so documents, the majority of which are dated. The name itself seems unusual. On this basis I assume – like Michalowski – that at least a large part of the attestations refer to a single individual, and thus I venture the following outline. Ribagada is attested first as a ra₂-gaba (rider) in SAT 2, 724 obv. iv 37 (AS 2 ix, Drehem), and subsequently in the same function in AUCT 1, 426 rev. 1 (AS 6 xi 3, Drehem) and CT 32, 10 BM 103412 obv. i 16 (AS 6 xi 27), a monthly account into which the previous receipt was entered.

§2.2b. In PDT 1, 464 obv. 1-2 (SS 1 ix 6, Drehem) Ribagada the rider then “enters the office of gala” (nam-gala-še₃ i₃-in-ku₄-ra-a). Michalowski (2006: 53-54) has demonstrated (a) that this office can only have been held temporarily, and (b) that it was often taken up by individuals described as Amorites. The latter observation agrees perfectly with a recently published text, BPOA 7, 2423 obv. 1-3 (AS 6, Umma), in which Ribagada is referred to as Amorite (2 guruš u₄ 12-še₃ ki-su₇ ri-ba-ga-da mar-tu gub-ba ša₃ buru₁₄, “two workers for twelve days, standing on the threshing floor [of] Ribagada [of] Martu, during harvest”).

§2.2c. Ribagada is then known as a ra₂-gaba maškim in SAT 3, 1186 rev. ii 74 (SS 1 xii, Drehem), BIN 3, 559 rev. 1 (SS 2 ix 23, Drehem), and as a maškim in PDT 1, 543 obv. 9 (SS 1 viii, Drehem)-one month before his last attestation as ra₂-gaba-, a title he continues to hold in several documents until at least PDT 1, 454 rev. 1 (SS 7 xi 29, Drehem). BPOA 7, 2821 obv. 6 (SS 7 iv 4, Drehem) lists one Ribagada among a group of šu-i (bathers); these are known to have served as couriers (e.g. for royal gifts: see Sallaberger 1993: 16-17). The final dated attestation occurs in NATN 940 (IS 2 vi), from Nippur, where a few goods are dispensed from an account of Ribagada.

§2.3. No. 3 = PH 17
Provenience: Drehem
Size: 44 × 38 × 23mm
Date: Šu-Suen 6 vii

§2.3a. Uršu and Uri-kidu are both muhaldim (cooks): they appear together in this function in AnOr 7, 107 (SS 9 x 4) from Drehem, and are otherwise well attested. Sigrist (1992: 317-318) briefly characterises Ahu-wer, a minor Drehem bureaucrat.

§2.4. No. 4 = PH 4
Provenience: Drehem?
Size: 49 × 39 × 19mm
Date: Šulgi 46 - 47 xii 3

§2.4a. A delivery for an unspecified cult by various officials. Rev. 2 is perhaps [ur]-mes^? despite the strong horizontal stroke, as three faint vertical strokes are visible inside the box.

§2.4b. Itraq-ili (rev. 3) is referred to as a lu₂ ma-ri₂^ki, a man from Mari, in the almost contemporaneous receipt PDT 1, 161 rev.1 (SH 47 iv 25, Drehem). There are a few other attestation of Itraq-ili holding various offices between SH 43 and AS 4. See MAD 3 s.v. TRK ? for further attestations and Owen 1992 on Syrians in Ur III documents. AHw offers two interpretations: “er ist lang, mein Gott” (AHw s.v. arākum) and “es (das Neugeborene) wurde blau, mein Gott!” (AHw s.v. tarāqum). The reading it-, not a₂-, seems guaranteed by i-ta₂-ra-aq-i₃-li₂ (UET 3, 1780; IS 1 xii). Hilgert (2002: 193) hesitantly places the name under trq, “grüngelb, blau werden”; see his note 54 (and ibid. 185 note 12). CDA s.v. tarāqum(a/a) suggests “to take pity, relent” (“OAkk, jB”), which would produce the acceptable meaning “my god has relented.”

§2.5. No. 5 = PH 23
Provenience: Umma
Size: 59 × 43 × 23mm
Date: nn iv

§2.5a. Most textiles listed here are well-attested. tug₂ aktum gi (rev. 1) is presumably “native aktum textile” (gi in the sense of gi₇ in dumu-gi₇, eme-gi₇, etc.), as opposed to the Elamite textiles in the following line. The alternative is “yellow aktum” (GI = sig₁₇).

§2.5b. The office of the galla-gal (rev. 7) is attested in Umma (see Dahl and Hebenstreit 2007: 45), this text seems to contain the only instance of someone receiving goods from his account.

§2.5c. Dingira (rev. 8) appears in over a dozen dated receipts from Umma, most of which resemble this tablet. They suggest that Dingira was active in the later reign of Šulgi and that he worked particularly with garments: MVN 15, 42 obv. 4 (SH 33 vi), ASJ 19, 212 34 obv. 3 (SH 33 xii), JCS 2, 185 NBC 3056 obv. 5 (SH 36 v), TCNU 604 rev. 1 (SH 37 iv), SANTAG 6, 31 obv. 6 (SS 37 v), CDLJ 2002/1, no. 14 obv. 3 (SH 39 vii), Nisaba 9, 205 obv. 3 (SH 44), SACT 2, 147 rev. 1 (SH 44 xi), YOS 4, 292 obv. 9 (SH 46), MVN 20, 142 obv. 9 (SH 46 v), BPOA 1, 731 rev. 1 (SS 47 v), BPOA 1, 876 rev. 3 (SS 47 vi), AnOr 7, 280 rev. 3 (SH 47 x). Two slightly later texts also from Umma mention a man named Dingira weighing textiles, Princeton 1, 301 rev. 4 (AS 7 viii) and BPOA 1, 598 rev. 7 (SS 2 vii).

§2.6. No. 6 = PH 24
Provenience: unknown
Size: 94 × 51 × 23mm
Date: unknown

§2.6a. This document is unusual in that it appears to consist of little more than a series of references to eleven other tablets. It was presumably employed in the administration of an archive. The reading pisan followed by two personal names in rev. 14 and 15 would indicate that the eleven tablets cited belonged to a tablet-basket. It is known from archive labels that such baskets were attributed to particular officials (see e.g. ASJ 8, 68 rev. iii 1 and the identical label in Nik 2, 162 rev. 8 and 165 rev. 5 [Foxvog 1986: 63-64]).

§2.6b. Now the pisan dub-ba label AR RIM 4 30 (SS 7 xii, Drehem) records that an individual named Iddin-Erra collected his accounts over a twelve month period. A dub-sar of this name is attested in AUCT 2, 381 obv. 15 (year name missing, Drehem). Is our tablet perhaps the aide-mémoire of a scribe called Iddin-Erra as he made a record of his accounts? Šu-Erra and Iddin-Erra are not uncommon names, but here they may refer to two scribes in the later reign of Šu-Suen. The Iddin-Erra of the pisan dub-ba label dates from SS 7 xii; around this time, a dub-sar called Šu-Erra is attested in Syracuse 203 rev. 4 (SS 9 i 6), AUCT 3, 197 rev. 10 (SS 9 ix 25, Drehem), BIN 3, 462 rev. 4 (SS 9 xi 14, Drehem), AUCT 3, 196 rev. 3 (SS 9 xi 17, Drehem), CST 455 rev. 9 (SS 9 xii 14, Drehem) as well as in a few other documents from the reign of Šu-Suen but of uncertain date; CUSAS 3, 1013 rev. 8 (SS 8 ix, Garshana) mentions a Šu-Erra dub-sar maškim. There is only one other text of the Ur III period in which two bureaucrats called Šu-Erra and Iddin-Erra appear together, as far as I can see, namely Princeton 2, 141 obv. i 6 and 15 (SS 9, Drehem) which also falls into this period of time.

§2.6c. Further, according to the recent orthographic study of Veldhuis (2008: 224-225) the presence of the sign ad₃ (LU×BAD) in our text (rev. 8) would of itself demand a date in or after SS 4 (if from Drehem) or SS 8 (Umma). This does at least not impede an attempt to date the tablet to the later reign of Šu-Suen.

§2.6d. In terms of form, too, the coarse appearance of the tablet (which seems to be of unusually generous size) and the absence of a date might point in the direction of an aide-mémoire or exercise of some kind. The rather erratic writing (gu₄ is not written consistently: compare obv. 1 and 6 with rev. 6 and 8; libir squeezed into obv. 7; the eleventh im noted on the left edge) gives the impression of having been quickly jotted down.

§2.6e. With all due hesitation I would like to think of this tablet as a briefly noted inventory or writing practice, perhaps by two scribes in the time of Šu-Suen, as this interpretation seems the most likely to agree with both content and form.

Version: 15 April 2010  

@article{Metcalf2010Six,
	note = {[Online; accessed 2024-04-26]},
	address = {Oxford; Berlin; Los Angeles},
	author = {Metcalf,  Christopher},
	journal = {Cuneiform Digital Library Bulletin},
	issn = {1540-8760},
	number = {1},
	year = {2010},
	publisher = {Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative},
	title = {Six {Ur} {III} {Tablets} from the {Hulin} {Collection} in {Oxford}},
	url = {https://cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/articles/cdlb/2010-1},
	volume = {2010},
}

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