Position in chronology
MS 2437
About this tablet
This is a record of workers from the very beginning of writing. It comes from southern Iraq around 3200–3000 BCE and may be from the region of Umma. It is not written as sentences. It is a list of numbers set against groups of signs that name or describe groups of workers, several of them marked as women (SAL). A total of 'heads' on the back gives the whole workforce. Tablets like this show early temple or palace officials keeping track of labour, and they come from before the signs had settled sounds or grammar.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Here is an account of workers. Three people are listed under the group SAL-ZATU628a-UR-AB2 and two under SAL-ZATU628a-ŠU-ŠU-ME. Two more are listed under UŠ-ŠUR2-BU and another two under DU-EN2-ZATU628a-SAL. The note on the back gives the total: sixty-two people in all. The entries we have add up to only nine, so most of the list must be in the parts of the tablet that are not transcribed here.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (only the part given in the transliteration; the tablet in the photo holds many more entries) 3: SAL-ZATU628a-UR-AB2 (a female worker or group) 2: SAL-ZATU628a-ŠU-ŠU-ME 2: UŠ-ŠUR2-BU 2: DU-EN2-ZATU628a-SAL Reverse (total) 62 heads (persons)
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
3(N01) , SAL ZATU628~a UR~a AB2 2(N01) , SAL ZATU628~a SZU SZU ME~a 2(N01) , USZ~a SZUR2~b BU~a 2(N01) , DU EN2 ZATU628~a SAL 1(N34) 2(N01) , SAG
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2437. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006054) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.