Position in chronology
MLVS 919
About this tablet
This is a small archaic (Early Dynastic) administrative account tablet, one of thousands of everyday bookkeeping records from early Mesopotamian institutions. It lists a series of numbered entries — quantities of what appear to be processed fish products ('split', 'poured/libated'), bitumen, and several other commodities or goods identified only by short logograms whose exact meanings are now uncertain. Tablets like this were produced by temple or palace scribes tracking incoming or outgoing goods, and their terse, list-like style — numbers followed by commodity signs with almost no narrative — is characteristic of the very earliest phases of writing, when script was still mostly an accounting tool rather than a vehicle for connected prose.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like an inventory list. The surviving entries record quantities of goods — several batches of what seem to be prepared fish (described as 'split' or 'processed', and separately as 'poured' or 'libated'), twenty units of bitumen, and a handful of other items logged only by short commodity names ('KA-lu-ub2', 'zubud', 'tar', 'nu-tar', 'ki-zi', 'garig') whose modern meanings aren't fully recoverable. The tablet opens with a few broken lines we can no longer read. The back of the tablet was left blank by the ancient scribe; the only mark there today is the museum's own inventory number, '919', added in modern ink.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (arranged in two columns of cases, read top to bottom, right column then left, per archaic tablet convention): 1. [...] ..., split/processed 2. [...] ..., poured (libated) 3. [... ...], poured (libated) 4. [...] gir-fish, split/processed 5. 20(?) [...], gestu(-fish/ear-item), split/processed 6. 140 (2(gesz2) 2(u)), gestu(-fish/ear-item), poured (libated) 7. 20, bitumen (esir) 8. 1, KA-lu-ub2 9. 2, zubud 10. 480(?) (8(gesz2)#?), [...], [...] 11. 70 (1(gesz2) 1(u)), tar 12. 20, nu-tar 13. 15, ki-zi 14. 6, garig (REC333) (Reverse: blank/uninscribed — no cuneiform signs, only the modern museum inventory number '919' written in ink.)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[...] x [dar]-ra [x] x [a]-de2 [x x] [a]-de2 [x] gir dar#-ra 2(u@c)#? x gesztu dar-ra 2(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) gesztu a-de2 2(u@c) esirx(LAK173) 1(asz@c) KA-lu-ub2 2(asz@c) zubud 8(gesz2@c)#? [...] [...] 1(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) tar 2(u@c) nu-tar 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) ki-zi 6(asz@c) garigx(REC333)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — MLVS 919. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: de Liagre Böhl Collection, Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden, Holland (P247613) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.