Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 163
About this tablet
This is a small clay administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the later fourth millennium BCE), one of the very earliest forms of writing in the world. It is a numerical account — likely tallying young animals, cows, and dairy products such as milk and a milk-container (KISIM) — kept by an unnamed scribe or official managing institutional stores. Rather than a connected sentence, it is a ledger of quantities set against short pictographic commodity or category labels, the everyday bookkeeping of an early Mesopotamian household or temple economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally sheet, not a story. It lists: 18 units of something recorded with the signs for 'calf' and 'cow' (perhaps young cattle and cows counted together); then 45 units of something now lost to a break in the clay; a line beginning with the sign UB, its meaning obscured by damage; two more lines that are almost entirely broken away; a line ending in '1' next to the sign for a dairy-vessel (KISIM); a subtotal of 3; and a final line pairing '1' with the signs for 'day' (or 'sun') and 'milk' — possibly a closing note about milk delivered on a given day. Altogether it reads like a fragmentary ledger of livestock and dairy goods, with most of the fine detail lost to breakage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N14) 8(N01), AMAR AB2 4(N14) 5(N01), [...] UB [...] [...], [...] [...], [...] [...] 1(N01), KISIM~b 3(N02) 1(N01), U4 GA~b
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.
Engine notes
read from photo5 uncertain terms ↓
- AMAR AB2 — Read as 'calves of cows'; AMAR = young animal/calf, AB2 = cow. The combination is standard in Uruk livestock texts but the precise age or category of animal is not specified.
- KISIM~b — A proto-cuneiform sign associated with dairy products — possibly a type of processed milk or butter. The '~b' variant distinguishes it from the base sign KISIM; exact product uncertain.
- U4 GA~b — U4 can mean 'sun/day/light/dried'; GA~b relates to milk or dairy. Together possibly 'sun-dried milk' or a specific milk product. Reading is tentative; the combination is attested in Uruk dairy contexts but meaning is debated.
- 3(N02) — N02 is a medium-order numerical sign. Its exact quantity relative to N01 depends on the counting system in use (sexagesimal, bisexagesimal, or capacity), which is uncertain without fuller context.
- UB# — Damaged sign, read with uncertainty (indicated by #). UB in proto-cuneiform contexts can denote a spatial or container term, but the reading here is tentative given the damage.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows two main fragments (plus smaller edge pieces) of a small, rounded clay tablet characteristic of the Uruk period proto-cuneiform corpus. The lower, larger fragment (obverse) shows clearly impressed circular/round numerals arranged in rows — consistent with N01 (small round) and N02 (slightly larger) impressions — and incised sign-groups in the upper register that are consistent with AMAR and AB2 as given in the transliteration. The museum accession number 'CUNES 52-20-006' is visible in ink on the right-side fragment, confirming identity. The upper fragment is too damaged and at an angle to read signs directly. The middle central fragment shows ruled lines (boxes) typical of Uruk administrative tablets, with wedge and curve impressions that roughly align with the transliterated signs, though individual signs are hard to confirm at this resolution. The numerical impressions on the lower fragment — rows of small round holes (N01) and slightly larger impressions (N02) with a few large rounds (N14) — agree well with the transliteration's numerical pattern (1(N14) 8(N01), 4(N14) 5(N01), etc.). The sign KISIM~b (a dairy-product logogram) and U4 GA~b cannot be individually verified at this resolution. The damaged/broken upper left corner explains the lacunae marked with [...] in lines 3–5. Overall, photo and transliteration are broadly consistent; specific sign readings in damaged areas cannot be confirmed from the photograph alone.
Generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 14, 2026 · 2077 in / 957 out tokens
Transliteration
1(N14) 8(N01) , AMAR AB2 4(N14) 5(N01) , [...] UB# [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] 1(N01) , KISIM~b 3(N02) 1(N01)# , U4# GA~b
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 163. 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 (P328730) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.