Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 137
About this tablet
One of humanity's oldest written documents: a proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from the Uruk period (late fourth millennium BCE), when writing itself was being invented in southern Mesopotamia. An administrative official recorded quantities of foodstuffs — apparently grain-cakes and related products — tallied in the archaic numerical systems, with entries noting disbursement or consumption, a purchase or exchange, and an institutional destination (a 'settlement' and what may be a cattle-stall or institution). The surface is badly worn, so most entries survive only as numbers with lost commodity signs; but the closing lines, marking totals 'consumed' and 'purchased,' show bookkeeping conventions already firmly in place at the dawn of writing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a running account of food items. The clerk lists several batches — one large unit of something now illegible, then measures of a grain-cake product marked 'NE,' then more quantities whose labels are worn away. Two units of the cake product are booked against the institution as 'fattened/grown stock returned to the settlement.' After a damaged stretch with one more small quantity, the summary lines close the account: a lost amount was consumed or disbursed by the settlement; the settlement made a purchase or exchange involving the institution on a marked day, with the goods consumed and the stock fattened; and the purchased amount itself was disbursed. Much of the middle of the tablet is too eroded to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N51) [...] 1(N28): NE, GUG2 (a grain-cake/foodstuff) X (number lost): [...] 1(N14): [...] 1(N28): NE, GUG2 (grain-cake) 1(N14): [...] GUG2 (grain-cake) — the settlement 2(N39): the institution/cattle-stall, fattened(?), the settlement, returned(?) [...] 1(N03) [...]: [...] X (number lost): the settlement — consumed/disbursed The settlement — purchase/exchange; the institution; |U4×1(N01)| (day/date notation) — consumed/disbursed, fattened(?) Purchase/exchange — consumed/disbursed
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
1(N51) [...] 1(N28)# , NE~a# GUG2 X , [...] 1(N14) , [...] 1(N28) , NE~a GUG2 1(N14) , [...] GUG2 URU~a1 2(N39~a) , AB~a BULUG3 URU~a1 GI4~a [...] 1(N03) [...] , [...] X URU~a1 GU7 URU~a1 SZAM2 AB~a# |U4x1(N01)| GU7 BULUG3 SZAM2# GU7
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 137. 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 (P325063) — 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.