Position in chronology
MS 2497
About this tablet
This is one of the very earliest accounting records known. It comes from southern Mesopotamia in the late Uruk period, around 3300–3000 BCE, before writing could record ordinary speech. On the front, a scribe lists allotments of barley in separate boxes, each tagged with a sign for a person, office or institution: one is the sign later read as 'temple administrator', others show a fish, a young goat and a settlement. On the back are the totals. Nothing like a sentence appears anywhere. The tablet is pure bookkeeping, an early step in how writing grew out of counting.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a barley distribution sheet. Eight units go to SZUBUR. Seven units and four smaller measures go to the entry marked with the fish sign. Three units go to the temple administrator, five to the entry marked with a young goat, and five more to the entry marked HI and 'day'. The last box, for a settlement, is marked for barley, but the transliteration gives no amount. On the back the scribe totals the barley at one large unit, seven units and four small measures. A second figure in another measuring system follows, and then a final grand total of barley.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (Case 1) 8 [units of] barley — SZUBUR (Case 2) 7 [units] 4 [smaller units of] barley — ZAG, fish (KU6) (Case 3) 3 [units of] barley — SANGA (administrator) (Case 4) 5 [units of] barley — ZATU773~b, kid (MASZ) (Case 5) 5 [units of] barley — HI, U4 (Case 6) settlement (URU), barley [the transliteration gives no numeral for this case] Reverse (Total) 1 [large unit] 7 [units] 4 [smaller units of] barley 1 [N46] 4 [N19] (a second quantity in another measuring system, with no commodity sign) 1 [large unit] 2 [N45] 1 [unit] 4 [smaller units of] barley (Notation of the numerical signs: N34 = large unit; N45 = middle unit; N14 = 'unit' ×1; N01 = smaller unit. The signs are kept as written and are not converted to modern measures.)
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
8(N14) , SZE~a SZUBUR 7(N14) 4(N01) , SZE~a ZAG~a KU6~a 3(N14) , SZE~a SANGA~a 5(N14) , SZE~a ZATU773~b MASZ 5(N14) , SZE~a HI U4 , URU~a1 SZE~a 1(N34) 7(N14) 4(N01) , SZE~a 1(N46) 4(N19) , 1(N34) 2(N45) 1(N14) 4(N01) , SZE~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2497. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006064) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.