Position in chronology
MS 2433
About this tablet
This is a small cushion-shaped clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), one of the world's earliest writing systems, used here for pure bookkeeping rather than storytelling. It appears to be a livestock tally from an institutional household — likely a temple or estate administration near Umma — recording small counts of rams, goats, ewes, and she-goats, ending with a total of sheep. Texts like this, with no verbs and no names, are the accounting backbone that literacy grew out of: someone needed to know exactly how many animals were on hand or had moved through the herd.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a short livestock count. It lists: 2 units of an unidentified commodity (possibly linked to ovens or vessels), 4 rams, 2 animals marked with an unclear category sign, 5 goats, and 1 ewe. A new section then records 2 she-goats and 1 more animal under that same unclear category marker. The tally closes with a total of 16 sheep, followed by a final, badly damaged line mentioning reed(?), goat(s), and what may be a place or source designation — but that closing notation is too worn to interpret with confidence.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 (units): UTUA (commodity, uncertain — 'oven/heated-vessel' category) 4 (units): UDUNITA, rams (male sheep) 2 (units): NUN (category/quality marker, meaning uncertain) 5 (units, secondary numeral system): MASZ2, goats 1 (unit, secondary numeral system): U8, ewe — (entry divider) — 2 (units): UD5, she-goats 1 (unit): NUN (category/quality marker, meaning uncertain) — (entry divider) — 16 (1 large-unit sign + 6 unit signs): UDU, sheep GI MASZ KI — [reed?] goat(s), place/source(?) (line badly preserved, sense unclear)
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) , UTUA~a 4(N01) , UDUNITA~a 2(N01) , NUN~b 5(N02) , MASZ2 1(N02) , U8 , 2(N01) , UD5~a 1(N01) , NUN~b , 1(N14) 6(N01) , UDU~a , GI MASZ KI
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2433. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006050) — 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.