Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 119
About this tablet
One of the world's oldest written documents: a proto-cuneiform administrative account from the Uruk period, around 3300–3000 BCE, before writing could yet record full sentences. A bookkeeper impressed numerals and word-signs into cases on the clay to tally food portions, fodder, hides, beer, and jars — apparently disbursements or deliveries connected with days and with an institution overseen by a temple administrator. The tablet is broken in places and the exact transaction cannot be reconstructed, but it shows accounting, not literature, at the very birth of writing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger, not a letter. The clerk counts things out entry by entry: four units of fodder connected with a place and certain days; five food rations; two, then one, tanned hides with fodder for given days. After a gap, larger totals follow — ten food rations with fodder, and ten of something handled by the temple administrator at the institution's stall. After another break, the account closes on the reverse with two entries for the temple, three implements, and single items each tagged to a place — one lot under the heading 'beer', the other under 'jars'. Several entries are lost in the breaks.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: 4 — fodder(?) (U2), mound/threshing place(?) (DU6), day(s); 5 — food portions (GAR), day, ...-NUN(?) day(?); 2 — day(s), stretched/tanned(?) hides (DU8), fodder(?); 1 — day, stretched/tanned(?) hide; [...] — [...] (Break) 10 — food portions (GAR), day(s), fodder(?); 10 — the temple administrator (SANGA), ... (illegible sign), cattle-stall/institution (AB), axe(?) (TUN3); [...] — [...] (Break) Reverse: 2 — temple/house (E2) of An(?); 3 — SZITA-implements(?); 1 — TAK4(?), place (KI); — beer; 1 — An(?), temple/house; 1 — TAK4(?), place (KI); — jar(s).
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
4(N01) , U2~a DU6~b U4 5(N01) , GAR U4# |NUN~b.U4|? 2(N01) , U4 DU8~c U2~a 1(N01) , U4 DU8~c [...] , [...] 1(N14) , GAR U4 U2~a 1(N14) , SANGA~a# X AB~a TUN3~a [...] , [...] 2(N01) , E2~a AN 3(N01) , SZITA~a1 1(N01) , TAK4~a KI KASZ~a 1(N01) , AN E2~a 1(N01) , TAK4~a KI DUG~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 119. 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 (P325363) — 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.