Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 181
About this tablet
This is a small clay tablet from the very early city of Uruk, inscribed in the proto-cuneiform script that stands at the birth of writing itself, sometime around 3300–3000 BCE. It is an administrative tally — a list of small numbered entries recording quantities of goods (barley or a similar commodity, fish, water) moving to or from named categories of people and officials, including a 'lord' or high official (EN) and a woman worker (SAL). Tablets like this were the bookkeeping tools of Uruk's temple or palace institutions, tracking who received or delivered what, long before writing was used for literature or law.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like an old inventory slip. On one side: 8 units of some good were brought in; 1 unit each of a few other items (one tied to a 'GIR3' sign, one a potter-related item) were recorded; 1 unit was delivered to the storehouse; and 1 unit is listed under a sign we can't identify with certainty. On the other side: 1 unit is entered under a 'lord' or senior official; a larger quantity (thirteen units, in the mixed counting notation used at the time) is linked to 'water' and 'received'; 5 units of the same goods noted earlier were issued out and delivered; 3 units were received under a woman worker, with a supervisor's mark; and finally 5 units of fish close the account. It's the kind of terse, numbers-first bookkeeping a Uruk-period scribe used to track goods and personnel — not a story, just the ledger.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: 1. 8(N01) — DU (delivered/brought), commodity: ZATU737xBUR [sign partly damaged] 2. 1(N01) — TI (variant t), GIR3 (variant g/b) 3. 1(N01) — BAHAR2 (variant b, 'potter' sign) 4. 1(N01) — DU (brought) to the E2 (house/storehouse) [E2 sign damaged] 5. 1(N01) — ZATU773 (sign, function uncertain) Reverse: 6. 1(N01) — EN (lord/high official), ŠA3 (variant a2-g, 'heart/inside') 7. 1(N14) 3(N01) [i.e. a compound quantity of one N14-unit plus three N01-units] — A (water) [sign damaged], ŠU ('hand'/received) 8. 5(N01) — BA (disbursed), DU (brought), commodity: ZATU737xBUR 9. 3(N01) — ŠU ('hand'/received), SAL ('woman'), PAP (supervisor/totaling marker) 10. 5(N01) — KU6 (fish)
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
8(N01) , DU |ZATU737xBUR~a|# 1(N01) , TI@t GIR3@g~b 1(N01) , BAHAR2~b 1(N01) , DU E2~a 1(N01) , ZATU773~a 1(N01) , EN~a SZA3~a2@g 1(N14) 3(N01) , A# SZU 5(N01) , BA DU |ZATU737xBUR~a| 3(N01) , SZU SAL PAP~a 5(N01) , KU6~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 181. 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 (P325748) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.