Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 471
About this tablet
A small, rounded Early Dynastic administrative tablet, probably from Umma in southern Iraq, recording allocations or rations of animals and foodstuffs — goats, birds, calves, and some kind of bread or cooked ration. The entries follow the classic proto-cuneiform format of a numeral on the left paired with a commodity or institutional designation on the right. It was likely one record among many kept by a temple or estate storehouse, tracking distributions to or from named officials. The tablet is too damaged and fragmentary to reconstruct the full transaction, but it fits a well-known genre of early Sumerian bureaucratic accounting.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records a series of small allocations: 4 units each of goats (with some qualifier now illegible), goods described only as 'given,' and items linked to an overseer or personnel category; a further 4 units associated with a lord or institutional head and what appears to be young livestock; 2 units from or to a storehouse involving some kind of baked or heated ration. Several lines are too broken to read. The rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] , [...] 4 (units) , UR[?] X goat DA~a 4 (units) , [dedicated/given] 4 (units) , [overseer/person?] head [...] , [...] bird DAR~a? [...] , [...] DA~a [milk/dairy?] 4 (units) , young animal (calf?) lord/EN [distributed?] 2 (units) , storehouse? BU~a [bread-ration with fire/fuel?] [...] , [bread-ration with fire/fuel?] X X [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] , [...] 4(N01@f)# , UR#? X MASZ2# DA~a# 4(N01@f) , RU 4(N01@f) , USZ~b? SAG [...] , [...] DAR~a#? MUSZEN# [...] , [...] DA~a# GA~a#? 4(N01@f) , AMAR EN~a BA? 2(N01@f) , E2~a? BU~a |NINDA2xNE~a| [...] , |NINDA2xNE~a| X X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 471. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006090) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.