Position in chronology
MRAH O.4995
About this tablet
One of the oldest categories of written document in human history: a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), probably from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records quantities of commodities — possibly agricultural goods, rations, or processed materials including what may be salt — distributed or assigned to institutional categories and officials. The tablet was produced by early Mesopotamian bureaucrats who invented writing precisely to keep track of economic flows like this. Its very early script, with numerical signs impressed in wet clay, represents writing at one of its earliest and most experimental stages.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records several separate commodity allotments. First: 36 units of something — possibly hoes or a tool category, the sign is damaged. Then smaller entries: 8 units for a lord or senior official (small grade); 7 units in a day-count or time-period category (small); 1 unit in a second such category (small); 22 units in a third (small). The final line tallies a larger total — running to over a hundred units across multiple sub-categories — covering what may be salt, hides or processed goods, and other commodities grouped under named institutional headings. The last classifier sign is uncertain due to surface damage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine36 [units] — AL[?] 8 [units] — EN (lord/official), small 7 [units] — [category U4×1], small 1 [unit] — [category U4×2], small 22 [units] — [category U4×3], small 1(N34) 14 [units] — [categories] 1(N57) 2(N57), salt(?), SU, PAP, NIM, |DARA3×KAR2| — AL[?]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
3(N14) 6(N01) , AL# 8(N01) , EN~a TUR 7(N01) , |U4x1(N57)| TUR 1(N01) , |U4x2(N57)| TUR 2(N14) 2(N01) , |U4x3(N57)| TUR 1(N34) 1(N14) 4(N01) , 1(N57) 2(N57) MUN~a1 SU~a PAP~a NIM~b2 |DARA3~cxKAR2| AL#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MRAH O.4995. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium (P005573) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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.