Position in chronology
MS 2501
About this tablet
This is a small proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the later fourth millennium BCE), one of the very earliest forms of writing anywhere in the world. It is a tally of quantified goods or commodities — organized into ruled boxes ('cases'), each holding a number followed by one or two pictographic signs — with the entries on both inscribed faces closing with the same formula naming a 'sanga,' the institutional administrator or temple accountant responsible for the record. Many of the individual signs (labeled here with ZATU catalog numbers, referring to the standard sign list for archaic Uruk texts) have no certain later reading, so exactly what commodities and personnel are being tracked cannot be fully recovered — but the format is unmistakably that of an institutional accounting document, the bookkeeping backbone of one of history's first bureaucracies.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is an accounting record, not a story or letter. It lists a series of entries, each giving a quantity followed by one or two sign-names for a commodity, person, or category — much like rows in a ledger. The surviving lines record counts such as '8 units of [wood/UR-type item]', '2 units of [DUR/ZATU819 item]', '1 unit of GIR₃/BU/DU/A', and further down '6 units of NE/NUNUZ', '2 units of [ZATU831]', '1 unit of AGAR₂', and '1 unit of TUN₃'. Several stretches of the tablet are broken and illegible. Both the front and back of the tablet end with the same closing note naming 'TE, RAD, the sanga' — apparently the official under whose authority the tally was kept, functioning like a sign-off or department heading on each side of the account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 8 (units, N01-count) — UR(?) [and] GIŠ₃ (wood/tree-sign, variant b) 2. 1 (N14-unit) ... [break] ... 2 (units, N01-count) — DUR (variant b) [and] ZATU819 (sign not otherwise identified) 3. [break] ... 1 (unit, N01-count) — GIR₃ (variant c), BU (variant a), DU, A 4. — TE, RAD (variant a), the sanga-official [break] 5. [break] — [break] 6. 1 (N34-unit), 1 (N14-unit), 6 (units, N01-count) [break] — [break] 7. 6 (N34-units) — NE (variant a) [and] NUNUZ (variant a2) 8. 2 (units, N01-count) — ZATU831 (variant g) 9. 1 (unit, N01-count) — AGAR₂ 10. 1 (unit, N01-count) — TUN₃ (variant a) 11. [break] — [break] 12. — TE, RAD (variant a), the sanga-official, X [break]
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
8(N01)# , UR~a? GISZ3~b 1(N14) [...] 2(N01) , DUR~b# ZATU819# [...] 1(N01)# , GIR3~c BU~a DU A , TE RAD~a SANGA~a# [...] [...] , [...] 1(N34)# 1(N14)# 6(N01)# [...] , [...] 6(N34) , NE~a NUNUZ~a2 2(N01) , ZATU831@g 1(N01) , AGAR2 1(N01) , TUN3~a [...] , [...] , TE RAD~a SANGA~a X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2501. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006068) — 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.