Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 112
About this tablet
A fragmentary proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period — among the very earliest writing in human history, predating the first proper Sumerian texts by centuries. A scribe pressed this clay tablet into compartments and recorded quantities of beer and barley using a specialized capacity-measuring system, almost certainly tracking institutional stores or outgoing rations at a large temple or palace complex in southern Mesopotamia. Despite its damaged state, the surviving entries reveal the exact bureaucratic pressure that drove the invention of writing: the urgent need to account for staple commodities at scale. The tablet is now held at Cornell University as part of a collection acquired in the early twentieth century.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is a tally sheet for beer and grain. At the top, a large quantity — roughly two bariga-measures (perhaps 60–120 liters) — of beer is entered alongside a storage-enclosure notation; the rest of that section is broken away. Lower down, two ban-measures of barley are clearly recorded, followed by two further entries giving smaller mixed quantities. Several lines are too badly damaged to read. Together, the surviving numbers paint a picture of routine stock-keeping: commodities measured, entered into their boxes, and presumably passed on to a storeroom keeper or ration recipient.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 2 bariga-measures, [...] beer — [storage-]enclosure [...], [sign unclear] [...] [number], [sign unclear] 2 ban-measures, barley 1 [large capacity-unit] 1 [medium capacity-unit], 1 ban-measure 1 sila, [sign unclear] mixed[-quality?] [...], [...] [...], [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] 2(N34) , [...] KASZ~a LAGAB~b [...] , X [...] N , X 2(N14) , SZE~a 1(N18) 1(N03) , 1(N14) 1(N01) , X HI@g~a [...] , [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 112. 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 (P283919) — 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.
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.