Position in chronology
MS 2434
About this tablet
A small clay account from the very dawn of writing — southern Mesopotamia, around 3200–3000 BCE, probably from Umma. It is written in proto-cuneiform, the picture-based script that preceded true cuneiform, and it is not yet a language we can read as sentences: it is a grid of ruled boxes, each holding a number and a sign for what was counted. The entries tally commodities and livestock — rams, young goats, and other categories — closing with what looks like an official's or institution's designation (SANGA, later the word for a temple administrator). One line mentions DILMUN, the name of the Gulf trading land, which would make this among the earliest written references to long-distance contact with Bahrain.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The ledger runs: 56 units of something now broken off; then a grain quantity (6 large and 3 smaller measures) of the NE/NUNUZ commodity; one Dilmun-type TUN3 implement; one PIRIG-SU item; and a further entry combining a single unit with a cluster of signs for grain, tablet/record and NUNUZ. After a damaged line the second column turns to animals: 8 UTUA-animals, 3 rams, 11 of the NUN category, and 9 kids. The account closes with a heading or authority line — TE, RAD, and the office of the SANGA (temple administrator) — followed by an empty ruled box. The back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (column i) 5(N14) 6(N01) — [commodity broken away] 6(N34) 3(N14) — NE~a NUNUZ~a1 1(N01) — TUN3~a, Dilmun(-type) 1(N01) — PIRIG~b1 SU~a[?] — 1(N57) BA |ŠE~a.NAM2| NAM2 DUB~a ZATU694~c NUNUZ~a1 [...] 1(N01)[?] — [sign unread] [...] Obverse (column ii) 8(N01) — UTUA~a[?] 3(N01) — rams (UDUNITA~a) 1(N14) 1(N01) — NUN~b 9(N01) — kids (MAŠ2) — TE RAD~a SANGA~a — (blank ruled case) Reverse: uninscribed.
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(N14) 6(N01) , [...] 6(N34) 3(N14) , NE~a NUNUZ~a1 1(N01) , TUN3~a DILMUN 1(N01) , PIRIG~b1 SU~a# , 1(N57) BA |SZE~a.NAM2| NAM2 DUB~a ZATU694~c NUNUZ~a1 [...] 1(N01)# , X [...] 8(N01) , UTUA~a# 3(N01) , UDUNITA~a 1(N14) 1(N01) , NUN~b 9(N01) , MASZ2 , TE RAD~a SANGA~a ,
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2434. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006051) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.