Position in chronology
MS 2438
About this tablet
A livestock account from southern Iraq, about 3100 BCE and perhaps from Umma. It is written in proto-cuneiform, the earliest stage of writing. The obverse counts sheep and goats one category at a time: ewes, nanny goats, goats, rams, and two classes whose meaning is unclear. The reverse gives the total. The scribe's arithmetic is correct, which shows that careful bookkeeping of flocks was one of the first jobs writing was used for.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Flock count: 2 ewes, 20 nanny goats, 28 goats, 27 animals of the kind listed as 'NUN', 4 of the kind listed as 'UTUA', and 10 rams. On the back, the scribe totals them at 91 and labels the total with the signs for sheep, fish, bird and goat. A second, larger figure of 257 follows. The sign after it is damaged and the rest of that line is lost, so we don't know what it counted.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 2 ewes (U8) 20 nanny goats (UD5~a) 28 goats (MASZ2) 27 (animals of the category) NUN~b 4 (animals of the category) UTUA~a 10 rams (UDUNITA~a) Reverse (Total:) 91: sheep (UDU~a), fish (KU6~a), bird (MUSZEN), goat (MASZ) 257: X [...]
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
2(N01) , U8 2(N14) , UD5~a 2(N14) 8(N01) , MASZ2# 2(N14) 7(N01)# , NUN~b 4(N01) , UTUA~a 1(N14) , UDUNITA~a 1(N34) 3(N14) 1(N01) , UDU~a KU6~a MUSZEN MASZ 4(N34) 1(N14) 7(N01) , X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2438. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006055) — 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.