Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 187
About this tablet
This is a small clay account in proto-cuneiform, the earliest writing in Mesopotamia, made in southern Iraq around 3200–3000 BCE. It is now at Cornell University, and where it was found is not known. Each entry seems to pair a lamb, or some other counted item, with a person, an office or a place. Among them are an official later called the 'sanga' (a temple administrator), a high-ranking 'en', and something written with the fish sign. Proto-cuneiform is still only partly understood and some lines are broken, so we can't say exactly what was being recorded. It is an early example of how animals were tracked and handed out in the first cities.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a list of lambs, and possibly other items, each matched to a person or office. The first two entries go to someone written 'GA', but the rest of those lines is broken. Next come a lamb for UMUN2 DU and a lamb for the SANGA, the temple administrator, marked DUB. The EN, a high-ranking official, gets an entry with five LAGAB marks and a lamb. The next two lines are lost, and the two after that keep only a LAGAB and a lamb; the names beside them are broken. The last entries give a LAGAB to the fish department (GA2 KU6) and one to GISZ3. The tablet ends with 'SZU TUR', perhaps a closing note or a signature.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse; the transliteration does not mark any surface or edge divisions) 1. Lamb(?) — GA [...] [...] 2. [Lamb(?)] — GA [...] 3. Lamb(?), LAGAB — UMUN2 DU 4. Lamb(?) — SANGA DUB 5. EN — LAGAB LAGAB LAGAB LAGAB LAGAB, lamb(?) 6. [...] — [...] 7. [...] — [...] 8. LAGAB — [...] 9. Lamb(?) — [...] 10. LAGAB — GA2 KU6 (fish) 11. LAGAB — GISZ3 12. SZU TUR
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
SILA4~c , GA~a# X [...] [SILA4~c] , GA~a [...] SILA4~c# LAGAB~b , UMUN2 DU SILA4~c , SANGA~a DUB~a# EN~a , LAGAB~b LAGAB~b LAGAB~b LAGAB~b LAGAB~b SILA4~c [...] , [...] [...] , [...] LAGAB~b , [...] SILA4~c , [...] LAGAB~b , GA2~a2 KU6~a LAGAB~b , GISZ3~b SZU TUR
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 187. 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 (P325741) — 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.