DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17896020
title: Ur III Prices A Revisited

description: Recommended Citation

APA Format:

Rauchhaus, F. (2025). Ur III Prices A Revisited [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17896021 

Chicago Format:

Rauchhaus, Felix. “Ur III Prices A Revisited.” Zenodo, December 11, 2025.  https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17896021 .

If you use or refer to this dataset, please cite it as above.

 

Abstract / Description

This dataset compiles the price or value equivalent data of cattle, equids, sheep and goats from administrative and legal documents from the Ur III period. The readings of the Sumerian terms follow Attinger (2023). The document references follow BDTNS. The system of measurement follows Powell (1987–1990).

 

Scope and Methodology

●      Corpus Coverage: Known Ur III Umma cuneiform sources mentioning prices of livestock searchable in BDTNS up to summer 2025.

●      Transliteration Standards: Attinger (2023).

●      Chronology and Dating: Year name sequence follows Molina (2023). Usually, the datings from BDTNS are adopted but deviations exist.

●      Measurement Units: Payments for animals were made in shekels/mana of silver = giĝ₄ (≈ 8.33 g)/ma-na (≈ 500 g), barley = še, dates = zu₂-lum, and oil = i₃ [barley, dates, and oil capacity measures: 1.0.0 = 1 gur (≈300L), 0.1.0 = 1 bariga (≈60L), 0.0.1 = 1 ban (≈10L) and sila₃ (≈ 1L); 1 gur = 5 bariga = 30 ban = 300 sila₃].

●      Uncertainties: Data marked with ? highlight uncertain interpretations or restorations of damaged passages.

 

Data Format

●      File Type: CSV (UTF-8, tabular)

●      Primary Fields:  Type (of Animal), Quality Level, Reference, Provenance, Comments, Date, Quantity (Adapted Transliteration), Total Value/Price (Adapted Transliteration), Value per animal in shekels of silver, Value of animal in grams of silver.

 

Introduction

This dataset contains price or value equivalence data from Ur III documents accessible via BDTNS up to summer 2025. Some of the prices were already collected in Snell 1982.

The included animals are anšekunga₂ “mules,” ab₂ “cows,” gud “male cattle,” anše unspecified “donkeys,” eme₃ “jennys,” dur₃ “jacks,” u₈ “ewes,” udu “sheep,” sila₄ “lambs,” maš₂ “goats,” and ud₅ “nannies.”

Dates, proveniences, and transliterations predominantly follow BDTNS, but deviations exist. The comment column indicates to which degree the transliteration could be checked, by photo (highest data quality) = no comment, just by copy (mediocre data quality) = “no photo,” and no possibility (lowest data quality= = “no copy, no photo.” The comment section also includes translations of the column Quality Level (in Sumerian). The “reference” of the price is the Ur III text name including obverse/reverse, column and line; the text’s name follows BDTNS conventions.

 

Comments, suggestions of additional data, or questions can be sent to Rauchhaus.F_sum@gmx.de.

Most animals were bought or at least calculated in silver. Other commodities—barley, dates, and oil/fat—have the following equivalences to silver:

Barley: as given in the respective texts, if not: 300 sila₃ (300L) = 1 giĝ₄ (see Cripps 2017).

Dates: as given in the respective texts.

Oil: as given in the respective texts.

 

Bibliography

Attinger, P. (2023): “Glossaire sumérien-français. principalement des textes littéraires paléobabyloniens.” Deuxième édition. .

Cripps, E. (2017): “The Structure of Prices in the Neo-Sumerian Economy (I): Barley:Silver Price Ratios.” CDLJ 2017:2. https://cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/articles/cdlj/2017-2.

Molina, M. (2023). “I nomi di anno,” in Pomponio, F. (ed.): Il regno della Terza Dinastia di Ur. StSem 25. Rome: Sapienza Università di Roma, 259–98.

Powell, M. (1987–1990): “Masse und Gewichte,” in Edzard, D. (ed.) Libanukšabaš — Medizin, RlA 7. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 457–517.