Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 182
About this tablet
A small bookkeeping tablet in proto-cuneiform, the earliest stage of writing, made in southern Mesopotamia around 3200–3000 BCE. It lists goods or commodities, each with a count: what may be cloth, a sheep, and several entries under signs whose meaning is still unknown. Some sign groups probably name an institution or the officials in charge. Few people could write at the time, and scribes used it to keep track of property belonging to temple or palace households. Because the tablet's origin is unknown and many of its signs are still undeciphered, only its general purpose as an account is clear.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an inventory list. One entry, marked with a single unit of a special counting system, may be cloth linked to a household or a god. Single units follow for two items we can't identify, then one sheep and one entry marked SUHUR, which may be a fish. A heading or subtotal line follows. After a damaged spot, the list goes on with 10 of one item, a group of signs that may name an office or an allotment, another 10, 2 of a compound item, and a line that may point to a settlement. The end is badly worn, but it still shows 4 of one item and 2 of something whose name is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse(?), column i 1. [...] — AB (household/institution) 2. 1 (N08 unit) — AN BA TUG₂ (cloth / garment) 3. 1 — ZATU776 UR₂ 4. 1 — sheep (UDU) 5. 1 — SUHUR 6. ZATU776 AB MU Column ii (or continuation) 7. [...] — [...] 8. 10 — X [...] 9. AB AN BA 10. 10 — LAGAB׊ITA LAGAB׊ITA 11. 2 — ZATU710 LAGAB HI@g 12. LAGAB URU AN BA (Break or damaged section) 13. [...] — [...] 14. 4 — LAGAB׊ITA 15. 2 — [...] (The rest is lost or uninscribed)
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
[...] , AB~a 1(N08) , AN BA TUG2~a 1(N01) , ZATU776# UR2 1(N01) , UDU~a 1(N01) , SUHUR ZATU776 AB~a MU [...] , [...] 1(N14) , X [...] AB~a AN BA 1(N14) , |LAGAB~axSZITA~a1| |LAGAB~axSZITA~a1| 2(N01) , ZATU710 LAGAB~b HI@g~a LAGAB~b URU~a1 AN BA [...] , [...] 4(N01)# , |LAGAB~axSZITA~a1| 2(N01)# , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 182. 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 (P325752) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.