Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 016
About this tablet
This is a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period, one of the earliest forms of writing in the world, produced not for narrative but for bookkeeping. It records a series of counted commodities — plants, cloth, wood, a date palm, a plow, and a storage jar — each entry paired with an archaic numeral sign, likely tracking goods issued or received by an institution such as a temple or storehouse. The final line, with its supervisory and categorical markers, may function as a summary or totaling notation closing out the account. Texts like this represent the very origins of accounting and literacy, centuries before writing was used to record language as we understand it.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a bookkeeping record, not a story or letter. Someone tallied a series of goods — quantities of an unidentified account item, a possible place or container marker, date-palm wood and horn, a plant or fodder allotment, a length of linen cloth, a portion marked 'woman' and 'half,' more plant rations, and a plow — each entry set down with its own numeral. Several entries are broken and their amounts are lost. The tablet ends, likely on its reverse, with a closing notation involving a supervisor or total marker, a category term, and mention of a storage jar, which may sum up or file the preceding entries. Much of the specific vocabulary remains untranslatable because these signs come from writing's earliest, pre-linguistic stage, when scribes recorded numbers and commodities more than words.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. 1(N34), 1(N58) — UR5(-a) [commodity/account term] 2. 1(N57) — URI [place-name or container sign] 3. 3(N57) — GIŠIMMAR (date palm), wood, SI (horn/measure) 4. [......] — LA2 (weighed/allotted), SUG5 (goose/marsh-bird sign) 5. [......] — U2 (plant/fodder) 6. [......] — ZATU759 (unidentified sign) 7. 1(N57) — GADA (linen cloth), NA2 (bed/couch sign) 8. 1(N57) — ŠU2 (hand/total), SAL (woman), BAR (outside/half-portion) 9. 1(N34), 1(N58), 3(N57) — U2 (plant), NAM(-a) (category marker) 10. [x], 3(N57) — U2 (plant) 11. 1(N57) — ZATU802 (unidentified sign) (Reverse) 12. ŠU ŠU (hand, hand) — APIN (plow) 13. BU (pluck/disburse), PAP (supervisor/total marker), NAM2 (category marker), IM (clay/wind sign), DUR2 (base/seat), ŠAGAN (storage vessel/jar)
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
1(N34)# , 1(N58)# UR5~a 1(N57) , URI 3(N57) , GISZIMMAR~b1 GISZ# SI [...] , LA2# SUG5 [...] , U2~a [...] , ZATU759 1(N57) , GADA~a NA2~a 1(N57) , SZU2 SAL BAR 1(N34)# , 1(N58)# 3(N57) U2~a NAM~a X , 3(N57) U2~a 1(N57) , ZATU802~b SZU# SZU# APIN~a BU~a# PAP~a NAM2 IM~a DUR2 SZAGAN
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 016. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA (P325231) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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