Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 126
About this tablet
One of the world's oldest written documents: a proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from the Uruk period, around 3300–3000 BCE, before writing could yet record full sentences. An anonymous administrator noted small quantities of grain products — breads or cakes, barley, perhaps metal — disbursed or owed over a stated span of about six months, with entries tied to an institution (possibly the 'Abzu' household) and to officials or personnel categories. The tablet is badly encrusted and broken, so it reads today as a list of numbers and terse labels rather than a narrative, but it is a direct window onto the bookkeeping that writing was invented to do.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger card. The readable entries run roughly: something for the Abzu institution; three units marked as a shortfall; one unit of gug-bread; one unit of precious metal(?); an entry for Šubur with more bread; one unit under the heading NIM; then several ruined lines; one unit of a baked product; more gug-bread; one unit connected with a woman (or female staff), a receipt, and a supervisor. The account closes with a time notation — six months — set against barley, and the same six-month figure is repeated on the back as the summary. Several entries are too damaged to read at all.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] : the ABZU(?) (institution) 3 (N39a units) : deficit(?), SUG5 1 (N28 unit) : GUG2-bread 1 (N28 unit) : AN(?), precious metal (KU3) [...] : ŠUBUR, GUG2-bread(?) 1 (N30a unit) : NIM [...] : HI(g) [...] : the ABZU(?) [...] : [...] 1 (N28 unit) : DU8 GUG2-bread ... 1 (N39a unit) : female (worker)(?), 'hand/received'(?), PAP-official(?) [...] : [...] '6 months' (time notation) : barley (reverse — total/subscript) '6 months' (time notation)
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
[...] , ABZU#? 3(N39~a) , LA2 SUG5 1(N28) GUG2 1(N28)# , AN#? KU3~a# [...] , SZUBUR GUG2~a? 1(N30~a)# , NIM~b1 [...] , HI@g~a# [...] , ABZU#? [...] , [...] 1(N28)# , DU8~c GUG2 X 1(N39~a) , SAL# SZU# PAP~a [...] , [...] |U4.6(N08)|# , SZE~a , |U4.6(N08)|
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 126. 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 (P325455) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.