Notes:

Sealed and inscribed clay tags like UM 19 were attached to sacks, each sack containing one month's vouchers for rations in the way stations, or rest houses, of the Ur III state's road system. The vouchers, commonly termed "messenger texts," list foodstuffs supplied daily to various officials, couriers, and workers whose jobs involved travel and who were entitled to provisions at the way stations; sometimes other items, such as sheep for offerings or fodder for beasts of burden, were listed as well. Each month the amounts listed on the daily vouchers were totaled up, the vouchers were put in a sack to be transported from the way station to the provincial capital, and the totals were listed on a clay tag attached to the sack. The tag thus served both as a label for the sack and as a summary of one month's disbursements on expense vouchers at the way station. Such tags were sealed by one or two officials, and the contents of the sack, or of the textual record, were confirmed by one or two other functionaries. (The foregoing description is based on F. Pomponio's discussion of these kinds of records in "Lukalla of Umma," Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 82 [1992], pp. 169-179, esp. pp. 172-7; and on W. Heimpel's discussion, in "Towards an Understanding of the Term sikkum," Revue d'Assyriologie 88 [1994], pp. 5-31, esp. p. 16.)

UM 19 is inscribed with the totals of “regular allotments” (sá-du₁₁), which were issued at the way station of Girsu River Tower, located upstream from Girsu in the province of Umma (see Heimpel, RA 88, p. 18), during the fifth month of Šu-Suen's eighth year. The final storage place for this and other records of Girsu River Tower would have been an administrative center in the city of Umma. The officials who sealed UM 19, Lukalla and Ur-Nungal, also sealed many similar tags together or separately (Pomponio, ZA 82, pp. 172-4), as well as numerous tablets of various types (see the listings given by R. Mayr, in The Seal Impresssions of Ur III Umma [Ph.D. dissertation, Leiden, 1997], under catalogue nos. 344.1-2 for Lukalla, and nos. 829.1-3 for Ur-Nungal; add UM 19 [=SET 185] to the listings for Lukalla, seal 344.2, and Ur-Nungal, seal 829.2). The confirming and conveying functionaries, Luduga and Ur-ema, are likewise attested in other records of the same type as this tag (Pomponio, ZA 82, pp. 176-7). The disbursements recorded on UM 19 include beer, porridge, flour, oil, and condiments, as rations; sheep, probably destined for offerings; and bran, presumably for fodder.