MS 2502

~3100 BCE·Uruk Period·P006069

About this tablet

This is a small clay account tablet from the very dawn of writing — the Uruk period in southern Mesopotamia, around 3300–3000 BCE, more than half a millennium before Sumerian could be written as connected language. Four entries on the front record large quantities — 358, 197, 80 and 81 units — set against short groups of signs naming the people, offices or commodities involved, one of them a temple administrator. The back carries no numbers, only a cluster of signs that looks like a heading or closing summary, including a 'supervisor' sign. Tablets like this are not literature but bookkeeping: the accounting habit that writing was invented to serve, here surviving in the Schøyen Collection with no recorded findspot.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

Four quantities are booked on the front of this tablet: 358 units against a broken entry that also carries a total-marker and the term RAD; 197 units marked as disbursed; 80 units charged to Ur, the temple administrator; and 81 units counted in reed-bundle measure. The reverse has no figure at all — just a short line of category signs, including one for a supervisor or elder and one meaning 'small', which probably served as a heading or closing note for the account. Several of the signs are proto-cuneiform terms whose meaning is still not fixed, so the entries can be counted precisely but not fully named.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

Obverse 1. 5(N34) 5(N14) 8(N01) — [x] 1(N57); DUR~b, LAGAB~b (total), RAD~a 2. 3(N34) 1(N14) 7(N01) — DUR~b, BA (allotted) 3. 1(N34) 2(N14) — UR~a, the temple administrator (SANGA~a) 4. 1(N34) 2(N14) 1(N01) — GI (bundle/reed-unit) Reverse 5. (no quantity in the first case) — NAM2, EŠDA(?), 3(N57), PAP~a (supervisor/elder), TE, TUR (small) (Numerical values, read in the sexagesimal system: line 1 = 5×60 + 5×10 + 8 = 358, plus 1 N57; line 2 = 3×60 + 1×10 + 7 = 197; line 3 = 1×60 + 2×10 = 80; line 4 = 1×60 + 2×10 + 1 = 81. The sign transliterated X in line 1 is broken and unread.)

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

5(N34) 5(N14) 8(N01) , X 1(N57) DUR~b# LAGAB~b RAD~a
3(N34) 1(N14) 7(N01) , DUR~b BA
1(N34) 2(N14) , UR~a SANGA~a
1(N34) 2(N14) 1(N01) , GI
, NAM2 ESZDA? 3(N57) PAP~a TE TUR

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC) ?) — MS 2502. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006069) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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