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 records the receipt of a sum of silver. Silver was rare in Sumer; most transactions were carried out with commodities such as barley.
Professor Lambert’s translation is provided below:

Clay Tablet, 49x42mm., with 11 lines of Sumerian cuneiform on obverse and reverse. The tablet is written in a bold, clear scribal hand and is very well preserved. It is an administrative document from the period of the third Dynasty of Ur, dated to the 5th year of Shu-Sin, fourth king of the dynasty, c. 2033 B.C. It records the receipt of a sum of silver.

Translatio
6 2/3 minas, 1 shekel, 20 grains of silver: the capital: turam-ili, supervisor of the merchant bankers has received.

Year after Shu-Sin, king of Ur, built the west wal
“That which keeps the Tindum at bay.”

Silver was rare in Sumer: most transactions were carried out with commodities such as barley serving as the medium of exchange. So this is a large sum. Merchant bankers were traders who raised money for trade, but did not normally engage in the missions themselves. As private persons they could finance traders who went to foreign parts. But the government liked to keep check on their activities since they had collectively much economic power. Hence this supervisor. Perhaps the silver referenced to here was in effect tax payed to the government. The term “capital” cannot so far be explained clearly.
A mina was about 500 grams, and a shekel was a 60th part of a mina, but 180 grains added up to 1 shekel.