Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 202
About this tablet
This is a small accounting tablet from the Uruk period in southern Iraq, around 3200–3000 BCE. It comes from the first stage of writing, when signs were still mostly word-pictures and no sentences were written. It lists single units of goods, probably grain or beer, next to short entries that may be people, offices or institutions. One entry names a 'house' linked to the Tigris river, and another names beer. It was most likely a record of what a household or temple handed out, but too much is broken to say exactly what was going on.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short list of handouts. The first entry gives a small measure of grain to someone or something written A-ŠU₂-SAL, and the next line is lost. Two more entries each get one unit: the first goes to a name we can't read, the second to an entry written with the sign PAP followed by an unreadable sign. After two more broken lines, one unit goes to the 'house of the Tigris', perhaps an estate or storehouse by the river. Another unit is beer, marked with signs we can't fully read. Another line is lost. The tablet ends with a label, NE-DU-TE-BU, which might name the official, the office or the reason for the handouts.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (?): [...] 1 small grain-measure unit (N39a): A ŠU₂ SAL [...]: [...] 1 (unit): X X 1 (unit): PAP~a X [...] 1 (unit): [...] [...]: [...] 1 (unit): the house (E₂~a) of the Tigris (IDIGNA) 1 (unit): beer (KAŠ~a) X BU~a [...]: [...] (Summary or subscript line:) NE~a DU TE BU~a
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(N39~a)# , A# SZU2# SAL [...] , [...] 1(N01) , X X 1(N01) , PAP~a# X [...] 1(N01) , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) , E2~a IDIGNA 1(N01) , KASZ~a X BU~a [...] , [...] NE~a# DU TE BU~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 202. 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 (P325159) — 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.