Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 184
About this tablet
A small account tablet from the very beginning of writing, about 3200–3000 BCE in the Uruk period. It comes from the antiquities market, so no one knows where it was found. It is now in the Cornell collections. Each box pairs a large count, written with round impressed number signs, with a few signs for people or offices. These appear to include a musician (NAR), officials (ME KU3) and a lord or high official (EN). The tablet never says what was counted, so we don't know if these were rations, animals or workers. Tablets like this show writing being used first as bookkeeping for large institutions.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A list of counts, each set against a name or title. The first box gives 640 to an entry with two signs we can't identify. The next gives 610 to a musician, marked with the sign A. The third box is lost. Then 600 goes to an official entry that mentions a settlement and the sign UR. After that comes 50 for a place marker and a lord or high official (EN). The last boxes are broken. Only a few signs survive at the very end, and they can't be read. The tablet never says what these numbers are counting.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. 1(N45) 4(N14) [i.e. 640, if the sexagesimal counting system is used]: GIR3@g~b ZATU773~a 2. 1(N45) 1(N14) [610]: NAR A 3. [...]: [...] 4. 1(N45) [600]: ME~a KU3~a URU~a1 UR~a 5. 5(N14) [50]: URU~a1xKI EN~a 6. [...]: [...] 7. [...]: X X X (Reverse and edges: no text visible in the photograph)
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
1(N45) 4(N14) , GIR3@g~b ZATU773~a 1(N45) 1(N14) , NAR A [...] , [...] 1(N45) , ME~a KU3~a# URU~a1# UR~a 5(N14) , |URU~a1xKI|# EN~a [...] , [...] [...] , X X X
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 184. 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 (P325761) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.