MS 2436

~3100 BCE·Uruk Period·P006053

About this tablet

This tablet, catalogued as MS 2436 in the Schøyen Collection, dates to the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE) and is one of the earliest examples of writing in human history — predating even the earliest Sumerian literature by centuries. It records what appears to be an administrative transaction involving commodities including salt, categorized under institutional titles and personal designations whose exact meanings remain contested. Likely from the region of Umma in southern Iraq, it belongs to a tradition of proto-cuneiform accounting tablets that formed the bureaucratic backbone of the world's first urban civilization. The signs are pictographic and numerical rather than phonetic, meaning we can read quantities and commodities but cannot yet 'hear' the spoken language behind them.

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

Written in modern English

This is an institutional record — a tally of goods, probably including salt, assigned to or received by specific officials or categories of workers. Two major quantity notations appear alongside signs for salt (MUN~a1), a supervisor or elder category (PAP~a), and what may be a female title or divine marker (MUSZ3~a). The rest of the signs — RAD~a, KITI, ZATU795, and others — remain undeciphered in any confident phonetic sense; we know they distinguish categories but not yet what words they represent. The tablet is too damaged and the script too early to reconstruct a fluent sentence — what survives is essentially a ledger entry: quantities of commodities, assigned to named categories of people or institutions.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

Obverse: [Signs:] RAD~a BU~a SI TE KITI ZATU795 LAM~b AN MUSZ3~a URU~a1 2(N15) 1(N02) , 2(N57) MUN~a1 PAP~a 2(N57) SU~a [Signs:] RAD~a KITI SI TE BU~a [Signs:] ZATU795 LAM~b RU KI HI KI URU~a1 AN MUSZ3~a SIG RAD~a [Approximate rendering, given proto-cuneiform conventions:] Row 1: [Category/title: RAD~a BU~a] — SI TE KITI — ZATU795 LAM~b — AN MUSZ3~a URU~a1 Row 2: 2(N15) 1(N02) [= large quantity unit] — 2(N57) [units of] salt — PAP~a — 2(N57) SU~a Row 3: RAD~a — KITI SI TE BU~a Row 4: ZATU795 LAM~b — RU KI HI KI — URU~a1 AN MUSZ3~a — SIG RAD~a

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

Transliteration

, RAD~a BU~a SI TE KITI ZATU795 LAM~b AN MUSZ3~a URU~a1
2(N15) 1(N02) , 2(N57) MUN~a1 PAP~a 2(N57) SU~a
, RAD~a KITI SI TE BU~a
, ZATU795 LAM~b RU KI HI KI URU~a1 AN MUSZ3~a SIG RAD~a

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2436. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006053) — 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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