Position in chronology
MS 2438
About this tablet
This small, rounded clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE) is one of the earliest written documents in human history — a livestock and commodity account from a temple or palace storehouse, probably in the region of Umma in southern Iraq. A scribe pressed numerical signs and pictographic logograms into wet clay to record quantities of sheep, goats, kids, rams, fish, and birds. The mixed entry near the bottom, grouping animals and fish together under a single large total, hints at a summary or combined tally of different commodity classes. At over five thousand years old, tablets like this one show writing being invented not for poetry or law, but for the very practical task of keeping count.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records the following livestock holdings: 2 ewes; 20 she-goats; 28 goats; 27 male kids; 4 young rams; 10 adult rams. A summary line then gives a large combined total — one large-unit denomination plus 31 — covering sheep, fish, birds, and goats together. The final entry records another large tally of 4 large-unit denominations plus 17, but the commodity sign is damaged and the rest of that entry is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 ewes (U8) 2 × 10 she-goats (UD5) 2 × 10 + 8 goats (MASZ2) 2 × 10 + 7 (male) kids (NUN~b) 4 young rams / lambs (UTUA~a) 1 × 10 adult rams (UDUNITA~a) 1 large unit + 3 × 10 + 1, [comprising:] sheep (UDU), fish (KU6), birds (MUSZEN), goats (MASZ) 4 large units + 1 × 10 + 7, [x] [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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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.