Position in chronology
MS 2434
About this tablet
This is one of the earliest written documents in human history — a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), likely from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records quantities of animals and goods, including what appear to be wild animals (a lion, a gazelle), livestock, items from Dilmun (the Persian Gulf), and entries tied to an official (perhaps a 'sanga,' a temple administrator). The tablet belongs to a class of early accounting records kept by temple bureaucracies at the very dawn of writing, when signs had not yet evolved into a true script capable of representing speech. Its survival in the Schøyen Collection makes it a rare witness to the very invention of record-keeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet tallies several categories of animals and goods: a large quantity of something (possibly fish or grain) in the opening entry, a significant count of items labeled with the NE and NUNUZ signs, one item from Dilmun, one lion-related entry, and a disbursement record involving grain (ŠE), a tablet or scribe notation, and NUNUZ. Further down: eight units of UTUA (possibly a specific animal or vessel type), three units of a young bovine (UDUNITA), eleven units of something in the NUN category, and nine goats or kids (MASZ2). The final preserved line names an official — possibly a temple administrator (sanga). Much of the tablet's context is too damaged or too early in the history of writing to read with certainty; the reverse is blank or heavily eroded.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5(N14) 6(N01) [...] 6(N34) 3(N14) , NE~a NUNUZ~a1 1(N01) , TUN3~a DILMUN 1(N01) , PIRIG~b1 SU~a [quantity] 1(N57) BA |ŠE~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 [reverse: uninscribed or lost]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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-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.