Position in chronology
MS 2434
About this tablet
This small clay tablet is an administrative account from the Uruk period, one of the very first phases of writing anywhere in the world (roughly the late fourth millennium BCE), likely from the Umma region of southern Iraq. It records a mixed tally — quantities of grain, eggs, a Dilmun-made container, animals (rams, goats), and other goods — organized into ruled cases the way a modern ledger uses columns and rows, closing with the office of the sanga, the chief administrator or temple manager who oversaw the transaction. The individual signs are pictographic rather than fully phonetic cuneiform, and several remain undeciphered outside modern scholarly convention (marked with '~' variants and codes like ZATU694). It is a fragment of the earliest bureaucratic paperwork of human history — not literature, but the bookkeeping that made large institutions possible.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a stock or delivery list. It opens with a tally of some commodity whose description is now lost, followed by an entry for a quantity of something called 'NE' along with eggs. Next comes a single container or vessel described as being of Dilmun make, and then an entry for a lion-related item. A line records that some amount of barley, along with other categorized items (including eggs and a written tablet), was disbursed or allotted — the exact total is only partly preserved and the line after it is broken away entirely. The list resumes with eight units of an oven- or vessel-related commodity, three rams, some further quantity under the 'NUN' category, and nine goats. The record closes by naming the sanga — the responsible official or institution — with a couple of additional terms whose precise function isn't fully understood. The back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5(N14) 6(N01) units, [...] (broken) 6(N34) 3(N14) units — NE, egg(s) (NUNUZ) 1(N01) unit — Dilmun container/vessel (TUN3, "of Dilmun") 1(N01) unit — lion (PIRIG), SU (no number given) — 1(N57) disbursed (BA): barley (ŠE.NAM2), NAM2, tablet (DUB), [sign ZATU694], egg(s) (NUNUZ) [...] 1(N01) — [...] (broken) 8(N01) units — UTUA (oven/heated-vessel category) 3(N01) units — male sheep / rams (UDUNITA) 1(N14) 1(N01) units — NUN (category/grade marker) 9(N01) units — goats (MAŠ2) (no number) — TE, RAD, sanga (chief administrator) (line blank / end of obverse) (Reverse: uninscribed, no signs present)
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
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-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.