MS 2357

~3100 BCE·Uruk Period·P006025

About this tablet

This is a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–2900 BCE), one of humanity's earliest writing systems, used not for literature but for institutional bookkeeping. It appears to record small quantities of goats, beer, and groups of dependent workers (or people from the Subir/Subartu region) allotted under the authority of named categories of officials — an EN (lord/high priest) and a sanga (administrator) — closing with a disbursement entry. Tablets like this come from early temple or palace households in southern Mesopotamia, likely near ancient Umma, and represent the very roots of accounting and literacy before language was fully written out in sentences.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

This tablet is a short administrative tally. It lists: 1 unit of Šubur workers; 7 goats tied to a foreign or highland source; 3 units under the authority of the lord (EN); 1 plus 3 units credited to the sanga, the institution's administrator; 5 more units of Šubur workers; and 7 units of beer. At that point the tablet breaks and the following entries are lost. On the back, after the gap, a final line records a disbursement — roughly two-dozen units, given out ("ba") in connection with a sign read as NIM. In short: a working list of workers, livestock, and rations being tracked and issued by temple officials, of which only part survives.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

Obverse 1(N01) : Šubur (dependent workers/Subarians) — ŠA (sign, uncertain) 7(N01) : goats — of the highland/foreign land (KUR) — ZATU773 (unidentified sign) 3(N01) : the EN (lord/high official) — IB (category uncertain) — PIRIG (sign, perhaps "lion") 1(N01), 3(N57) : the sanga (institutional administrator) 5(N01) : Šubur (dependent workers) — ZATU795 (unidentified sign) — LAM (sign, uncertain) 7(N01) : beer — DA (marker, uncertain) (Break — text lost) Reverse 2(N14) 4(N01) : disbursed (ba) — NIM (sign, possibly "highland/Elam" or unrelated ideogram)

Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

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Transliteration

1(N01) , SZUBUR SZA3~a1
7(N01) , MASZ KUR~a ZATU773~a
3(N01) , EN~a IB~a# PIRIG~b1
1(N01) , 3(N57) SANGA~a
5(N01) , SZUBUR# ZATU795 LAM~b
7(N01) , KASZ~c DA~a
, [...]
2(N14) 4(N01) , BA NIM~a

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2357. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006025) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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