Position in chronology
MS 2436
About this tablet
This is a proto-cuneiform economic tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), among the very earliest writing in the world — decades or centuries before it could record connected sentences. It is not a story or letter but an accounting entry: a sequence of commodity, place, and institutional signs paired with numeral notations, most likely tracking a disbursement or stock of birds, salt, and related goods tied to a city (URU) and a supervisory office (PAP). Because writing at this stage recorded only nouns, numbers, and administrative titles without grammar connecting them, its exact transaction is unrecoverable in detail — but tablets like this one are the ancestors of all later Mesopotamian bookkeeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like an inventory slip. The first line lists a string of commodity and institutional markers — something involving birds, a 'horn' item, and a city — grouped together as a heading. The next line gives quantities: two units of one type, one of another, plus two units of salt (or a similar staple), with a supervisor's total of two more units. A third line repeats the same core terms from the heading, apparently as a second entry or a check line. The tablet closes with another cluster of signs recording that something was 'given' or 'deposited' at a place, described as 'mixed,' again referencing the city, the sky/divine sign, and the bird-related term. As with all texts this early, there is no verb tense or connecting grammar — just nouns and numbers — so the precise transaction being logged cannot be fully reconstructed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: (1) RAD — BU — SI ("horn") — TE — KITI — ZATU795 — LAM — AN — MUSZ3 — URU ("city") (2) 2(N15) 1(N02), 2(N57) MUN ("salt"?) — PAP (total/overseer): 2(N57) SU (3) RAD — KITI — SI — TE — BU (4) ZATU795 — LAM — RU ("given/deposited") — KI — HI ("mixed") — KI — URU ("city") — AN — MUSZ3 — SIG — RAD
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
, 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-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.