MS 2433

~3100 BCE·Uruk Period·P006050

About this tablet

One of the earliest written documents in human history, this small clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE) is a livestock account — a tally of sheep, rams, ewes, goats, and she-goats, with possibly a fish entry. It likely comes from a temple or palace storehouse in southern Iraq, where professional administrators used proto-cuneiform signs to track animal holdings. The tablet is not yet 'writing' in the full linguistic sense; it records quantities and commodity signs, the direct ancestor of later Sumerian script. Its survival gives us a window into the world's first bureaucracies, where counting and recording were the engine of urban life.

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

Written in modern English

This tablet records two groups of animals. The first group lists: 2 fish (or a commodity marked UTUA), 4 rams, 2 of the 'NUN' quality or type, 5 goats, and 1 ewe. A second group follows with 2 she-goats and 1 NUN-type animal. A final totaling line gives 16 sheep in all, with a notation that appears to reference reeds, goats, and a location or source. The rest of the tablet's meaning is difficult to recover given the archaic sign forms.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

2 — UTUA (fish?) 4 — male sheep (rams) 2 — NUN~b (quality/type marker) 5 — goats 1 — ewe [subtotal or section divider] 2 — she-goats 1 — NUN~b (quality/type marker) [subtotal or section divider] 1(N14) 6(N01) [= 16] — sheep — GI MASZ KI (reed? / goat / place?)

Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

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-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).

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Related sources

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