Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 153
About this tablet
This is a proto-cuneiform economic tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), among the earliest writing in human history — not a connected sentence but rows of quantities paired with commodity and title signs. It records small amounts of cheese, beer, and other goods moving through an early temple or institutional household, naming officials like the 'sanga' (a temple administrator) and 'EN' (a lord or high priest). Texts like this are the accounting backbone of the world's first cities, tracking goods rather than telling stories, and their pictographic signs are still only partly understood by scholars today.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a very early accounting record, written in a pictographic script so archaic that it cannot be read as connected sentences — only as a series of line entries pairing numbers with goods and titles. What survives lists small quantities of cheese and beer, a mention of silver and water, a storeroom, and officials identified by titles like 'tablet-keeper,' 'sanga' (temple administrator), and 'lord' (EN), with something apparently 'delivered by hand.' A cattle-pen and further numbered entries follow, but many lines at the start, middle, and end are broken, and a few signs (including one, called ZATU776 by scholars, with no settled reading) remain unidentified, so the exact transaction — what was disbursed, to whom, and why — cannot be fully reconstructed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...], [...] [...], NU11 (shining/bright) [AN] (sky/heaven, broken) [...] 1(N01), AN (sky/deity) ŠA3 (heart/interior) UR2 (base/root) [...], [PA] (overseer) KU3 (silver/bright) A (water) [GIŠ3] (broken, sign uncertain) 1(N22), GUG2 (cheese) KAŠ (beer) BAR (portion/disbursement) 1(N01), GUG2 (cheese) 1(N01), ZATU776, X (sign not identified) [...], [...] 1(N01), DUB (tablet) SANGA (temple administrator) 1(N01), GA2 (storeroom) ME EN (lord/high official) ŠU DU (delivered/brought by hand) 1(N01), TUR3 (cattle-pen) 5(N57) 2(N01), ME DAR PAP (total/supervisor) 2(N01), AN NU11 (shining) [...] 1(N14), ZATU776, X A (water) HAL (divide/allot) AL (hoe[?])
Our translation engine — Sonnet 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
[...] , [...] [...] , NU11# [AN] [...] 1(N01) , AN# SZA3~a1 UR2# [...] , [PA~a] KU3~a# A# [GISZ3~a] 1(N22) , GUG2 KASZ~a BAR 1(N01) GUG2 1(N01) , ZATU776 X [...] , [...] 1(N01) , DUB~a SANGA~a 1(N01) , GA2~a1 ME~a EN~a SZU DU 1(N01) , TUR3~a 5(N57) 2(N01)# ME~a DAR~b# PAP~a 2(N01) , AN# NU11# [...] 1(N14) , ZATU776 X A# HAL AL
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 153. 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 (P325192) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.