Position in chronology
CUSAS 31, 189
About this tablet
This is a small proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period, one of the earliest writing systems in human history, made not to record language but to track goods and quantities in an institutional household. Each line pairs a number with a sign — likely officials, buildings, commodities, or storage units — much like a modern inventory sheet listing who received what. The tablet is broken and many of its terms (NAGA, MUŠ3, UB, DA) remain genuinely undeciphered, but its basic shape — numbers, titles, grain, storehouses — shows the bookkeeping of a Sumerian temple or palace economy over five thousand years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like a tally sheet: five units are recorded against a 'lord' or high official (the rest of that entry is broken); five more against a storehouse, marked with some kind of side or adjacent notation; five against another 'lord' entry, possibly headed or foremost; five against a lord entry possibly meaning 'delivered' or 'in transit'; and two more lines of five units each against signs too worn to read. Then four units of an uncertain item (perhaps a boat or container); five units tied to a measured field or plot; four units of a commodity called naga (possibly a plant product); two units against a storage bin category; a broken, illegible entry; one unit of an uncertain personnel or institutional category (muš3); one unit of barley paired with another term (nam2); and finally a compound total — 1 unit of one size, 3 of another, and 1 of yet another — against a storehouse whose further description is lost. In short: a short list of quantities distributed among officials, storerooms, and commodities, with a summary tally at the end, but too fragmentary to say more precisely who is being credited or why.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 5(N01), lord~a [...] 2. 5(N01), storehouse~a, DA~a (side/adjacent) 3. 5(N01), lord~a, SAG(?) (head/foremost?) 4. 5(N01), lord~a, DU(?) (delivered/in transit?) 5. 5(N01), X (sign illegible) 6. 5(N01), X (sign illegible) 7. 4(N01), MAR~a [...] 8. 5(N01), GAN2 (field/measured plot) 9. 4(N01), NAGA~a 10. 2(N01), UB 11. [...], [...] (broken) 12. 1(N01), MUŠ3~a 13. 1(N01), ŠE~a.NAM2 (barley-NAM2) 14. 1(N34) 3(N14) 1(N01), storehouse~a [...]
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
5(N01)# , EN~a# [...] 5(N01) , E2~a# DA~a# 5(N01) , EN~a# SAG#? 5(N01) , EN~a DU#? 5(N01) , X 5(N01)# , X 4(N01) , MAR~a# [...] 5(N01) , GAN2# 4(N01) , NAGA~a# 2(N01) , UB [...] , [...] 1(N01) , MUSZ3~a 1(N01) , |SZE~a.NAM2|# 1(N34) 3(N14) 1(N01) , E2~a# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 31, 189. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA (P433196) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.