Letter of King Ibbi-sin of Ur to Isbi-Erra before the Fall of Ur 2004 BCE

Koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Department of Liberal Education

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

29 December 2012

Samuel Kramer is my source for this interesting study. I met him at the Oriental Institute in Chicago months before his death on 26 November 1990. He was already 92 or 93 at that time. It was a short visit and only brief exchanges took place but I was very impressed by this short old man. Prof. dr. J. Brinkman took me over to greet him. Kramer is a Jew who came from Russia and settled in the USA. He earned his doctoral in 1929 and was working closely with E. Speiser. Charles Fensham and Izak Cornelius, both my mentors, use to say that Kramer was a Sumerian first and then a human. I am using here his work “Sumerian Literary Texts in the Ashmolean Museum” in Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts Vol. V (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1976). He deals with the subject as if he was alive then. It is very interesting how he goes through the textual material.

My other mentor, prof. dr. Akio Tsukimoto of Rikkyo University in Japan, gave me once a good guideline about Kramer. He said something like this: “Samuel Kramer works with virtual Vorlages so that what is important for him is to eclectically put a text together that may have represented the original text.” I found this to be very true about Kramer myself also. Some things are conflated, mixed, added or omitted. Why he omitted the dating section is not sure. He sometimes reconstruct not the text under discussion but a Vorlage in his mind. So he used all the information to reconstruct the Vorlage. Thus, his transcription may be what is in the text but may be based also on another text. Sometimes he does not translate. When he used dots .. mean one sign is absent and … means two signs are absent and …. means that three or more signs are absent.

Text no. 27 is the bitter accusation of king Ibbi-Sin to Išbi-Erra as a corrupt “treacherous double-dealer” (Kramer 1976: 16). Ibbi-Sin was the last king of the Ur III dynasty.

Line 1 starts with the words “speak to Išbi-Erra” ^diš-bi-èr-ra ù-na-a-dug₄. The form of the verb ù-na-a-dug₄ was discussed by Dietz Otto Edzard in his Sumerian Grammar 2003: 122 under the title “polite imperative”. He pointed out that the pronunciation of  was probably [unêdug] since the Akkadian loanword became unetukku.

Line 2 is providing information of the sender of the letter: “thus says your king Ibbi-Sin or ^di-bí-^dzuen lugal-zu na-ab-bé-a. Lugal is the word for king and –zu added means “your” because it is the possessive suffixed particle for the 2^nd person (Edzard 2003: 30). The interesting thing about ^dzuen is that the signs are written from right to left but this text is suppose to be read from left to right? It is actually ^denzu not ^dzuen. The affirmative na- is used (Edzard 2003: 119) in front of the verbal complex. The prefixed particle na- expresses “thus” or “however” or “now”.

Line 3 en-na ^denlíl lugal-mu me-šè i-im-du-dè-en

“As long as Enlil is (?) my king, where will you go(?)?”

en-na is the nominal use of en-na since it is en-na + nouns and it compares to the Akkadian adi = “until, as long as” (Edzard 2003: 164). The –mu in lugal-mu is the Directive 1^st person indicator “to me” thus, “king to me” (Edzard 2003: 93). The verbal complex is i-im-du-dè-en (see forms at Edzard 2003: 82 and 83). i- in front of the verbal complex is prefixed indicator but it’s function is difficult to define by Sumerologists (Edzard 2003: 109-111).

Line 4 za-e ur₅-gim inim ì-bal-e

“You, thus you break word.”

za-e is the personal pronoun in Sumerian for the 2^nd person singular “you” (Edzard 2003: 55). ur₅-gim is the demonstrative pronoun “this” (Edzard 2003: 57). inim = word and the verb is ì-bal-e “you [he] break”is a transitive verb of the 3^rd person singular like ì-là-e = he pay (Edzard 2003: 83).

Line 5 u₄-da ^denlíl-le mà-a-ra hul ba-an-gig

“When Enlil hated me,”

The temporal element is u₄-da = “when”. It is used like an adjective and is the locative (Edzard 2003: 20). Literally it means “with the day” or present/nowaday. “With the day Enlil hated me”.

Line 6 dumu-ni-^dzuen-na-ra hul ba-an-gig

“hated his son Sin,”

dumu is the Sumerian word for “son”. The directive indicator is added to the noun dumu meaning “to his son” and is the 3^rd person singular “to him” as “son to him” literally. The addition of –ra after the Personal noun at the end is the Dative indicator and –na- is added to indicate “for or to him” and is the 3^rd person singular.

Line 7 urí^ki lú-kúr-ra bí-in-sì-mu

“you give Ur over to the enemy”

urí^ki = the city of Ur. lú-kúr-ra means “enemy” and ra is the dative case particle meaning “to” (Edzard 2003: 40).

Line 8 ki-?ba nu-me-a lú-kúr im-zi-ge kur-kur im-suh-suh

“(so that) there not being any . . .the enemy rises to attack, confound all the lands”. nu- is suffixed to the verbal form “to be” = me (Edzard 2003: 114 and 82). By reduplicating kur = land it becomes plural (Edzard 2003: 31 at 5.3.2).

Line 9 u₄ ^den-líl-le dumu–ni ^dzuen-na-ra im-me-gur

“Day Enlil returned to his son Sin”

u₄ is the word for “day” (Edzard 2003: 20. See Edzard 2003: 139 at 12.14.4.6 where it is used for the word “when”). The directive indicator –ni 3^rd person singular is added to the word for “son” dumu to give “to his/her son”. –ra at the end of the name is the Dative suffix.

Line 10 za-e inim-zu giskim im-ma-an-tuku

“You, your word acquired the sign”

za is the 2^nd person singular possessive pronoun in the genitive and locative (Edzard 2003: 30). zu- is the 2^nd person singular possessive pronoun attached to inim which means “word” to make “your word”. There are many meanings of tuku like “to have, to own, to marry, to receive, to acquire, to get, to have a claim against somebody”. giskim means “sign, signal or omen”. gis means “tool” and connected here it is message.

Line 11 20-gú-kù-babbar šám-e-dè šu-ba-e-ti

“You received 20 talents of silver to buy grain”

  babbar is the word for “silver” and gú-kù is the word for “talents”. šu-ba-e-ti is the word šu-ba- meaning “to release or open the hand” probably to let the money go over to the buyer. Edzard 2003: 95 gives the similar word as “he brought the hand to it” = “received it”. The use of šu- with –ti is a typical example of the frozen use of a directive indicator, says Edzard.

Line 12 2-še-gur-ta-àm kù-babbar-1-gín-e bí-in-šám-šám-e

“you proceed to buy two gur grain for each shekel of silver”

gur- is a measure of 144 sila in Larsa but 300 sila in the Ur III period. še is “barley” or “grain”. ta is the ablative “from”. šám may be an Akkadian loanword in Sumerian meaning “to buy or to purchase”. The Akkadian equivalent is šâmu(m). gín means “shekel” of silver and is ca. 8.333 grams according to the online Sumerian Lexicon of John A. Halloran. See also Edzard 2003: 96.

Line 13 mà-a-ra 1 še-gur-ta-àm za-e mu-un-gi

“for me you sent one gur for each shekel”

mu is the directive 1^st person singular dimensional indicator “to me”. za-e is the 2^nd person personal pronoun “you”. The –àm at the end of the noun is an enclitic copula “to be” and translated as “gur grain is”. mà-a-ra is the Dative dimensional indicator 1^st person singular “for me”.

Line 14 puzur₄-^dnu-muš-da šagina bád-igi-hur-sag-gá

“Puzur-Numušda, the commander of Bad-igihursagga”

Line 15 mar-tu lú-kúr-ra šà-kalam-ma-mu-šè a-gim im-da-an-ku₄-re-en

“How is it you permitted the Martu, the enemy, to enter my land?”

kalam is the ancient Sumerian word for “land of Sumer” (Halloran). Martu is the word for the Amorites. The word for “enemy” we had above, namely lú-kúr-ra. The ra attached is the Dative indicator. šà- attached to the noun “land” here is to indicate that the event already happened (Edzard 2003: 120). It functions as an affirmative and a modal indicator. ku₄

Hallogan indicated that the word comes from two words that mean place and entrance. Here it is a verb meaning “to let enter”. The Sumerian verbal form is always at the end of the sentence just like Korean and Japanese. All three languages are post-positional languages as opposed to other western languages that are prepositional languages. Sumerian, Korean and Japanese are SOV languages but western languages are SVO languages.

Line 16 en-na ^gištukul sìg-ge-dè nam-mu-e-ši-in-gi

“As long as I did sent you weapons to strike”

The etymology of en-na is not known so that not much can be said about it (Edzard 2003: 164). It functions the same as the Akkadian adi “until”. “Until I sent you the weapons”. Since the noun in Sumerian and Korean and Japanese must stand in the front of the sentence and thus weapons will be find there: ^gištukul. The word sìg means “to strike”. ge may be the cohortative “we” to include the king and his general. The addition of nam-mu in front of the verbal complex at the end means it has the modal indication of affirmation: “I did sent you” (Edzard 2003: 119).

Line 17 lú-sag-du-nu-tuku kalam-ma ì-gál-la

“how is it that you sent the men without heads who are in the land”

Line 18 a-gim mar-tu-e an-ta nam-mu-ši-in-gi

“against the Martu from above you sent”

an-ta is the locative ta with the word for “heaven”. The meaning is “against”.  

(to be continued)