Sumerian cuneiform is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. First appearing in the 4th millennium BC in what is now Iraq, it was dubbed cuneiform (‘wedge-shaped’) because of the distinctive wedge form of the letters, created by pressing a reed stylus into wet clay. Early Sumerian writings were essentially pictograms, which became simplified in the early and mid 3rd millennium BC to a series of strokes, along with a commensurate reduction in the number of discrete signs used (from c.1500 to 600). The script system had a very long life and was used by the Sumerians as well as numerous later groups – notably the Assyrians, Elamites, Akkadians and Hittites – for around three thousand years. Certain signs and phonetic standards live on in modern languages of the Middle and Far East, but the writing system is essentially extinct. It was therefore cause for great excitement when the ‘code’ of ancient cuneiform was cracked by a group of English, French and German Assyriologists and philologists in the mid 19th century AD. This opened up a vital source of information about these ancient groups that could not have been obtained in any other way.
Cuneiform was used on monuments dedicated to heroic – and usually royal – individuals, but perhaps its most important function was that of record keeping. The palace-based society at Ur and other large urban centres was accompanied by a remarkably complex and multifaceted bureaucracy, which was run by professional administrators and a priestly class, all of whom were answerable to central court control. Most of what we know about the way the culture was run and administered comes from cuneiform tablets, which record the everyday running of the temple and palace complexes in minute detail, as in the present case. The Barakat Gallery has secured the services of Professor Lambert (University of Birmingham), a renowned expert in the decipherment and translation of cuneiform, to examine and process the information on these tablets. His scanned analysis is presented here. This document is a record of food issued to a group of men traveling on official business.
Professor Lambert’s translation is provided below:

Clay tablet, 55x43mm., with 11 lines of Sumerian cuneiform on obverse and reverse, the whole surface rolled with scribe’s cylinder seal, to give the inscription. This is an administrative document from the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, dated to the month Ezen-Lisi (“Festival of the god Lisi”) of the second year of Ibbi-Sin, last king of the dynasty c. 2027 B.C. It is a record of food issued to a group of men traveling on official business:

Translatio
1 roast shee
7 sila of soup: the men of Hurtum [a town]

when they went to Hurtu
via Ahu-tab, king’s messenger, when Me
the Grand Vizier, went from town to town.

Disbursment of the month Ezen-Lis
Year: the high priestess of Uruk was chosen by divinatio
A sila was a measure of capacity, about .85 of a litre. Hurtum is mentioned in other Ur III texts, and was apparently in the neighborhood of the modern Kirkuk. The apparent inspection of towns by the Grand Vizier seems to be new to this document, though it is easy to understand. Central government needs to keep check on what is happening in the provinces.

The seal inscription is in two columns, and all but one sign can be read:

Shu-Sin, Ahu-Tab,
Mighty king, son of Nur-Sin,
king of Ur, . . . man,
king of the four world quarters: your servant.

The seal owner was of course, the king’s messenger named in the document. Note that he was using a seal given to him as a seal of office by the father and predescessor of the king of the day. The seal was also rolled to show a standing figure in the complete scene standing before a god, who is not shown, with a crescent in the sky and a star in that. This standing figure with hands clasped was meant as the seal owner, so it looks as though the scribe and seal owner was being egotistic and making sure that his picture appeared on this document, while his god did not. The crescent is the moon god’s symbol, worshipped at Ur. The star is the symbol of the goddess Inanna, goddess of love and war.