Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 139
About this tablet
One of the oldest kinds of written document in existence: a proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from the Uruk period (late fourth millennium BCE), before writing could record full sentences. An administrator pressed numeral impressions into the clay and added signs naming commodities — a grain product, birds, and other goods now broken away — with what appears to be a grand total on the reverse. Its exact origin is unknown, and it now resides at Cornell University. Tablets like this show writing at its birth: not literature, but bookkeeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger entry, plain and simple. It records roughly two large units plus eleven of a foodstuff called GUG₂, marked as received; two large units of a commodity written SI A; a lost entry; twenty birds assigned to a storage category; and another lost entry. On the back, the accountant added up the columns: a total including six large units, a ten, and three single units. The middle entries and parts of the total are too damaged to read — the surviving numbers and commodity signs are all that remain of this ancient stocktaking.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 2(N34) 1(N14) 1(N01) [i.e. two large units, one ten, one unit] — GUG₂ (a foodstuff/grain product), ŠU ("received"/"in hand") 2(N34) [two large units] — SI A [...] — [...] 2(N14) [two tens] — bird(s) (MUŠEN), UB (storage/accounting category) [...] — [...] (reverse, total line) [...] 6(N34) [...] 1(N14) [...] 3(N01) [i.e. six large units ... one ten ... three units]
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
2(N34) 1(N14) 1(N01) , GUG2 SZU 2(N34) , SI A [...] , [...] 2(N14) , MUSZEN UB [...] , [...] [...] 6(N34)# [...] 1(N14) [...] 3(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 139. 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 (P325762) — 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.