The following text, in form a Sumerian incantation, is written upon a tablet (11 by 7 cm., lower left corner broken off and some surface damage) excavated at Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley in the season 1926–1927, and given the excavation-number U.7734. It was found with several other tablets belonging to the same period in a burnt level over the upper (2nd period) floor of rooms 5–6 in the private house called “No. 7 Quiet Street.”
Its contents are a prayer recited, no doubt by attendant priests and followers, on one occasion or more when Rim-Sin, king of Larsa, 1822–1763 B.C., made a state entry into the “great exalted gate” of Ur. This was the building found by the excavator in the third season of his work, which was either identical with or incorporated d u b - l á - m a ḫ, the seat of justice and, presumably, of court-records, a function which accords with the usual oriental practice of sitting at judgement in the city-gate. This grand entrance led, in fact, to the whole of the “temenos” or sacred area as it existed in the Larsa period, and whether or not this included the king's own residence it certainly included also the main sanctuary itself É - k i š -Nu-g á l (line 15), where dwelt the divine couple Nanna and Ningal, waiting to receive (11 f., 44 f.) and to send out (15) messages carried by servant-deities.