Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 181
About this tablet
A small clay account tablet from the very dawn of writing — proto-cuneiform of the Uruk period, roughly 3200–3000 BCE, now in Cornell University's collection. A temple or estate bookkeeper has ruled the surface into boxes and filled each with a number followed by a sign or two naming what was counted: a potter, a household, fish, and several commodity designations whose meaning is still unknown to us. There is no grammar here and no sentences — only quantities and categories, the raw accounting language from which all later writing grew.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Eight units of the commodity written with the DU and ZATU737-in-BUR signs. One unit each for: a TI-GIR₃ entry, a potter, a delivery to the household, a ZATU773 item, and one for the lord's inner quarters. Thirteen units of water/canal work received. Five units disbursed of the same DU/ZATU737-in-BUR commodity. Three units received of fine goods under the supervisor. Five fish. Whether the last entries are a running total or a separate account cannot be determined; several boxes are damaged at the edges.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine8 (units): DU, |ZATU737×BUR| 1 (unit): TI GIR₃ (a personnel/animal designation) 1 (unit): BAHAR₂ — potter 1 (unit): DU, E₂ — house(hold) 1 (unit): ZATU773 1 (unit): EN, ŠA₃ — the lord, the inner (quarter/heart) 13 (units): A ŠU — water/canal, received 5 (units): BA (allotted), DU, |ZATU737×BUR| 3 (units): ŠU (received), SAL, PAP — fine (goods)/female, the supervisor 5 (units): KU₆ — fish (The tablet is inscribed on both faces; the surviving entries are given here in the order of the transliteration. Several cases are chipped at the edges and their signs are only partly preserved.)
Our translation engine — Opus 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-opus-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.