Position in chronology
CUSAS 31, 189
About this tablet
This is one of the earliest kinds of writing known: a proto-cuneiform account from the late Uruk period, about 3200–3000 BCE, from an unknown site in southern Iraq. A scribe listed small counts, mostly fives, against short labels. The labels are probably officials, offices or categories connected with a 'house' (a household or institution), and a high official called the EN appears several times. The reverse gives the grand total, 91, under the heading 'house'. That shows the tablet was an institutional tally, although we cannot tell what was being counted.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally of units assigned to different entries. Five each go to several entries headed by the EN (the lord or chief official), one of them tied to the household. Two more entries of five have unreadable labels. Next come 4 for the MAR entry, 5 for the field, 4 for NAGA and 2 for UB. One line is lost. After it, single units go to MUŠ3 and to ŠE-NAM2. On the back, the scribe gives a grand total of 91 for the household, and the rest of that heading is broken.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 5 (units): EN (lord/official) […] 5: house (E2) DA 5: EN, SAG (head?) 5: EN, DU 5: (unread sign) 5: (unread sign) 4: MAR […] 5: GAN2 (field) 4: NAGA 2: UB […]: […] 1: MUŠ3 1: ŠE+NAM2 Reverse (total) 91 (1 sixty, 3 tens, 1 unit): house (E2) […]
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
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-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.