From the Collections of the Iraq Museum: New Ur Iii Tablets Primarily From the Umma Region

The study provides the edition of fifteen tablets from the Iraq Museum, which are dated to the Ur III period. The provenience of the tablets has been established based on internal evidence, allowing to conclude that the majority of the texts come from the Umma region. The documents under consideration deal primarily with the administration of agriculture and the movement of associated by-products. The texts display interesting peculiarities, including the use of problematic date formulas, unorthographic spellings, and notably, the mention of toponyms so far unknown. We were able to determine that some of these tablets originated from a non-institutional setting. This setting was likely that of royal estates that functioned outside the constraints of the provincial administration – such as the estate of the Princess Šat-Eštar – a phenomenon that exemplifies the complexity of the economy during the Ur III period.