Position in chronology
CUSAS 31, 166
About this tablet
This is a small proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the later fourth millennium BCE), one of the very earliest forms of writing anywhere in the world. It is a tally or accounting record — a series of entries pairing numerals (impressed circles and semicircles representing counted units) with commodity and title signs like 'milk,' 'garlic/onion,' an overseer marker, and an institutional administrator (sanga). Rather than telling a story, it is a bookkeeping list: quantities of goods or rations tracked against officials or categories in an early temple or household economy. Much of its vocabulary — signs like ZATU659, KAB, SUG5, DUR — has never been matched to a later Sumerian word, so parts of the accounting logic remain genuinely unrecovered.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like an ancient inventory or ration list. It records small quantities — twos, threes, fives, tens — of goods (something like garlic or onions, milk or a dairy product, and other unidentified items) issued to or tracked by named offices or officials, including someone called a 'sanga' (a temple administrator) and various overseer-type roles. Several entries are broken and illegible, so we can't reconstruct the full accounting. Toward the end there are larger numeral groups (a 'ten' plus units) tied to what may be a bundle or binding of some kind, and the tablet closes with another mention of the same unidentified sign (ZATU659) seen earlier in the list — perhaps a repeated commodity or a closing institutional mark.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2(N01) — SZUM (garlic/onion or metal item) — PA~a (overseer/classifier) — U4?(day/storm marker) — E~a (house/temple) — ZATU659 2(N01) — SANGA~a — |ZATU737xDI| (compound sign) 3(N01) — GA~a (milk/dairy product) 1(N01) [...] — [...] [...] — [...] 5(N01) — DU?(delivered/in transit) — TE 3(N01) — KAB? [...] 3(N01) — ZATU659 — X 2(N01) — ZATU659 3(N01) — SUG5 — X [...] — [...] [...] — [...] 1(N14) 4(N01) [...] X [...] 2(N14) 10(N01) — DUR~b — ZATU659
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
2(N01) , SZUM PA~a U4#? E~a ZATU659 2(N01) , SANGA~a |ZATU737xDI| 3(N01) , GA~a 1(N01)# [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 5(N01) , DU#? TE 3(N01) , KAB#? [...] 3(N01) , ZATU659 X 2(N01) , ZATU659 3(N01) , SUG5 X [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N14)# 4(N01)# [...] X [...] 2(N14) 10(N01) , DUR~b , ZATU659
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 31, 166. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: anonymous, unlocated (P386388) — 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.