Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 199
About this tablet
This is a small broken piece of an account from the Uruk period (about 3300–3000 BCE), when writing was still new. It lists small numbers next to words that seem to be titles or kinds of workers: a SUKKAL (a title later meaning 'minister'), a work troop, and probably female workers. The text is too damaged to say what was being counted or handed out, or where the tablet was written. It is still a useful example of how the first scribes kept track of people and offices.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving part is a short tally. One unit is listed for someone or something called NIM, two for the SUKKAL, the official later known as a minister, and an unknown amount for a work troop. Two more are entered under DU together with three smaller units for women, and two under an entry that may read PU. The line after that begins with one unit, but the rest is broken off. The start of the list and everything after these lines are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (fragment; beginning, right side and end broken) 1. [...] 1 [...], [...] 2. [...], [...] 3. 1: NIM~a 4. 2: SUKKAL (minister) 5. [...]: work troop 6. [...], [...] 7. 2: DU, 3 (small N57 units) female (workers) 8. 2: PU2(?) [...] 9. 1 [...], [...] (Rest of the obverse lost. The reverse and edges show no text that can be read.)
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(N01) , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) , NIM~a 2(N01) , SUKKAL [...] , ERIN# [...] , [...] 2(N01) , DU 3(N57) SAL 2(N01) , PU2#? [...] 1(N01)# [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 199. 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 (P325170) — 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.