Position in chronology
CDLI Lexical 000030, ex. 057
About this tablet
A small proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), probably originating at Umma in southern Iraq, now held in the Schøyen Collection in Oslo. It records quantities of various commodities — likely food and flavouring items including malt (used in brewing), a spice plant (GAZI, perhaps cassia), and fish or a fish-related product (SUHUR) — tallied using the standard numerical notation of the earliest writing system known. Tablets like this are the paperwork of the world's first urban economies: short, practical lists made to track goods moving through a temple or palace storehouse. Several lines are damaged or broken, and the full commodity list cannot be recovered.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally of goods, several lines of which are now lost or damaged. Among the readable entries: 5 units of what appears to be malt, 5 units of GAZI (a spice, possibly cassia), 1 unit of SUHUR (carp or processed fish), and 1 unit of a further commodity whose sign (KAR2~b) is not yet fully understood. The remaining lines record single units of commodities whose names are broken away. The opening entry mentions an uncertain sign alongside the number 1. The rest is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N01) , [...] X AD~a#? 5(N01) , MUNU3? 5(N01) , GAZI 1(N01) , [...] 1(N14) , SUHUR 1(N14) , KAR2~b 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , X [...] 1(N01) , [...] [N] , [...] X
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(N01) , [...] X AD~a#? 5(N01) , MUNU3? 5(N01) , GAZI 1(N01) , [...] 1(N14) , SUHUR 1(N14) , KAR2~b 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , X [...] 1(N01) , [...] [N] , [...] X
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CDLI Lexical 000030, ex. 057. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006217) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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.