Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 175
About this tablet
This is a small clay accounting tablet from the city of Uruk, dating to the very early phase of writing (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), when scribes were still using pictographic signs and numeral impressions rather than syllabic script. It appears to record quantities of several kinds of containers and commodities — wooden items, ceramic vessels, reed mats, boats or measuring vessels, and cauldrons — followed by a closing notation involving barley, a storehouse of 'the land,' a city or urban institution, and a final disbursement of oil or fat. Tablets like this are the earliest surviving bureaucratic paperwork, tracking the flow of goods through a temple or palace household rather than telling a story; the individual sign meanings are still debated by specialists precisely because writing itself was brand new at this date.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a short inventory or receipt: 2 units of a wood/house-related item, 6 vessels of a particular type, 6 reed mats, roughly eight units of a vessel or boat called 'MA,' and some cauldrons (the exact count is broken off). The closing lines note that this record is a tablet belonging to a storehouse of 'the land,' tied to a city and to barley — essentially filing information for the account — and that a quantity of oil or fat was issued or distributed at the end. It reads like a warehouse tally of containers and foodstuffs from one of the world's very first bureaucracies, though several of the technical terms cannot be pinned down with certainty today.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2(N01) units, GIŠ-E₂ (wood/house-sign commodity) 6(N01) units, DUG-vessel (compound sign, DUG×UDU×TAR type) 6(N01) units, KID-mat (reed mat, variant b) 1(N14)+7(N01) units, MA (vessel/boat) 1(N14)+[...] units, SZEN-vessel (cauldron, variant b) Disbursed (BA): tablet (DUB) of the storehouse (E2) of the land (KALAM), city (URU), barley (ŠE), plot/garden (SAR) , oil/fat (NI) — disbursed (BA)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(N01) , GISZ@t# E2~a 6(N01) , |DUG~bx(UDU~axTAR)| 6(N01) , KID~b 1(N14) 7(N01) , MA 1(N14) [...] , SZEN~b BA DUB~a E2~a KALAM~g URU~a1 SZE~a SAR~a , NI~a BA
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 175. 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 (P325453) — 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.