Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 187
About this tablet
This is a small proto-cuneiform tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), among the very earliest writing in human history, now held at Cornell University. Its entries pair the sign for 'lamb' (SILA4) with 'milk' (GA), titles like 'lord' (EN) and 'administrator' (SANGA), and repeated container or counting signs (LAGAB), suggesting a record of livestock, dairy goods, and personnel or officials associated with an early institutional household — perhaps a temple or palace economy tracking flocks and their keepers. The tablet is broken and worn, so much of its accounting logic (exact quantities, precise relationships between entries) is lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like an early bookkeeping tablet tracking lambs and milk, along with the officials responsible for them — a 'lord' or high official, an administrator, and someone described with a record or tablet notation. Several lines list repeated counter or container marks alongside lambs, and the middle of the text is broken and unreadable. Toward the end, after another gap, the surviving entries again pair lambs and containers with what may be a storeroom and fish, then wood, and finally a closing notation reading something like 'hand, small' — possibly a total or a note about a minor quantity or junior party. Much of the tablet's fine detail — numbers, exact relationships between entries — has not survived.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: 1. Lamb(s), milk, [sign uncertain] [...] 2. [Lamb(s)], milk [...] 3. Lamb(s), [LAGAB-sign]; lord/UMUN2, DU (brought/delivered) 4. Lamb(s); sanga-official, tablet/record 5. EN (lord/high official); LAGAB LAGAB LAGAB LAGAB LAGAB (five LAGAB-signs), lamb(s) (Break) [...] , [...] [...] , [...] (Break ends) LAGAB-sign; [...] Lamb(s); [...] LAGAB-sign; storeroom(-sign) GA2, fish LAGAB-sign; wood/GISZ3 SZU (hand/total), TUR (small/junior)
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
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-sonnet-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.