Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 193
About this tablet
This is a small proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the later 4th millennium BCE), among the earliest writing in the world — centuries before the development of a fully phonetic script. Its surface is a bookkeeping notation: rows of numeral signs paired with pictographic commodity signs (sheep, a fish called SUHUR, an ambiguous 'AB' sign that could mean 'cattle-pen,' 'sea,' or an institutional category, and a reddish or processed good). It likely recorded the intake or disbursement of livestock, fish, and other goods by an early Mesopotamian institution or household — the kind of everyday accounting that made large-scale urban economies at sites like Uruk possible.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This broken tablet is an early tally sheet. It lists one sheep, one carp (or a fish-measure called SUHUR), and one unit of a fish-related item whose first sign is too damaged to read. The next entry is lost. Further down, one unit of something called 'NE-KI' is recorded, followed by more badly damaged lines that are illegible except for scattered numeral and sign traces. Toward the end, an entry of one plus one (in two different counting systems) is linked to a compound sign, then the 'NE-KI' item reappears. The tablet closes with what looks like a summary line pairing an institutional or cattle-related term (AB) with a reddish commodity (SI4) that was 'consumed' or issued out — the standard closing notation of ancient ration or delivery accounts. Much of the tablet is broken, so the overall transaction cannot be fully reconstructed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (unit): sheep 1 (unit): SUHUR (carp/fish) 1 (unit): [illegible sign], fish-compound sign (ZATU759×KU6) [...] : [...] 1 (N26-unit): NE~a, KI [...] : [two illegible signs] [...] : [...] AB~a, [U4×1(N01) sign] [...] [...] : [...] [...] 1 (N24-unit), 1 (N28-unit): [ZATU714×HI compound sign] 1 (N26-unit): NE~a, KI [U4×1(N01) sign], AB~a AB~a, SI4 (reddish commodity), consumed/disbursed
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
1(N01) , UDU~a 1(N01)# , SUHUR 1(N01)# , X |ZATU759xKU6~a| [...] , [...] 1(N26) , NE~a KI [...] , X X [...] , [...] AB~a |U4x1(N01)| [...] [...] , [...] [...] 1(N24) 1(N28) , |ZATU714xHI@g~a| 1(N26) , NE~a KI |U4x1(N01)|# AB~a AB~a SI4~f GU7
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 193. 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 (P326800) — 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.