Position in chronology
FMB 27
About this tablet
This is not a clay tablet but a small barrel of polished black stone, engraved with one of the oldest writing systems on earth — the archaic script of Mesopotamia around 2900–2600 BCE. The round drilled dots are numbers; the incised pictographs list fields, oxen, offerings, copper, and named officials or recipients, including the 'en' (a lordly or priestly title). It is an accounting or dedication record made durable in stone rather than clay, now held at the Bodmer Museum near Geneva. Texts of this age sit right at the boundary where writing was still bookkeeping, before it could record full sentences.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger carved in stone: a series of numbered entries, most in round tens. One entry of about 40 concerns a first-fruits offering connected with the lord (the 'en'); another of about 50 concerns a field and cattle, again involving the lord. Thirty units go with a mound or locality, and a large figure — two big-unit and seven ten-unit marks — is booked against a field with a vessel measure. Unnumbered lines note a goat, copper, and a tablet being brought in. Three entries of twenty each follow, their objects damaged, and a final forty is assigned to a chief, possibly a man named Šubur. Several sign groups are too archaic or worn to interpret, and the ends of the last lines are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, archaic administrative entries) [...] : PA (overseer/classifier), oxen(?) 4(N14) [= 40?] : first-fruits offering (NESAG), with(?) the EN (lord), NAM2, KAB, GAR (placed?) 5(N14) [= 50?] : field (GAN2), cow(?) ..., the EN(?) 3(N14) [= 30?] : ..., AD(?) 3(N14) [= 30?] : KA, mound (DU6) 2(N50) 7(N14) : field (GAN2), (the sign) SILA3-vessel-in-jar (a capacity/vessel designation) [...] : IB, goat (MASZ), copper [...] : TUM3 (brought/delivered?), tablet (DUB) [...] : MUSZ3, ... (damaged) 2(N14) [= 20?] : GISZ×SZU2, ... [break] 2(N14) [= 20?] : BU [break] 2(N14) [= 20?] : ..., BU [break] 4(N14) [= 40?] : GAL (chief/head?), ..., Šubur(?) [break]
Our translation engine — Fable 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
, PA~a GU4? 4(N14) , NESAG~a1 KI~a EN~a NAM2 KAB GAR 5(N14) , GAN2 AB~a X EN~a? 3(N14) , X AD~c? 3(N14) , KA~a DU6~a 2(N50) 7(N14)? , GAN2 |SILA3~axDUG~a| , IB~a MASZ URUDU~a , TUM3 DUB~b , MUSZ3~a X 2(N14) , GISZxSZU2~a X [...] 2(N14) , BU~a# [...] 2(N14) , X BU~a# [...] 4(N14) , GAL~a X SZUBUR? [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — FMB 27. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Bodmer Museum, Cologny, Switzerland (P427655) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.