Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 219
About this tablet
This is a small clay administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the later 4th millennium BCE), among the very earliest writing in human history. It is a tally of quantities — recorded with the archaic numeral-impression system rather than written numbers — against a short string of pictographic commodity and institutional signs: fish, eggs, aromatic resin, a storage bin, a courtyard or compound, and a 'house.' It almost certainly comes from the bookkeeping of a temple or large household economy, tracking small deliveries or allocations of foodstuffs and goods, but the exact transaction and the officials or recipients involved cannot be reconstructed from the surviving signs alone.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like a short inventory or receipt list. It records seven small entries, each opening with a quantity (using the old dot-and-circle counting marks rather than written numerals) followed by one or two commodity or location signs: some kind of processed or measured good tied to a fish delivery and a storage courtyard; a quantity linked to signs read roughly as 'sky/AN' and 'foot/going'; another tied to a storage bin; a quantity of eggs (or roe) associated with a 'mother' designation; a small amount of aromatic resin kept at a 'house'; and a final, partly broken entry that names a place before breaking off. Altogether it reads like a scribe's running tally of goods moving through or stored at a temple or household, but the tablet is cracked and worn, and the last line trails into a gap we can no longer read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N01) 1(N39~a) units — MUD, NA, BU(-marked) fish (KU6), (of the) courtyard/storage-compound (KISAL) 2(N39~a) units — AN, GIR3 ("going/foot") 3(N39~a) units — UB (bin/compartment), ZI[...] (damaged) 2(N39~a) units — NUNUZ ("egg/roe"), AMA ("mother") 1(N39~a) unit — ŠIM ("aromatic/resin"), E2 ("house") 1(N39~a) unit (sign damaged) — KI ("place/ground") [...] (broken, remainder lost)
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) 1(N39~a) , MUD NA~a BU~a KU6~a KISAL~b1 2(N39~a) , AN GIR3@g~b 3(N39~a) , UB ZI~a# 2(N39~a) , NUNUZ~a1 AMA~a 1(N39~a) , SZIM~a E2~b 1(N39~a)# , KI# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 219. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Rare Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York, USA (P006351) — 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.