Position in chronology
MS 2502
About this tablet
This small clay tablet comes from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), the very beginning of writing in southern Mesopotamia — writing here is not yet a full sentence-based script but a system of impressed number-signs (the round and oval marks) paired with a few incised commodity or title-signs. It is almost certainly a bookkeeping record: a series of quantities, probably of grain or a similar staple, tallied against people or officials, one of whom seems to carry the title 'sanga' (temple administrator/manager). Tablets like this are the world's oldest surviving accounts — mundane bureaucratic notes that happen to be the first physical evidence of writing itself.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally sheet. It lists several batches of goods — probably grain, measured in the number-notation of the time — against a handful of short labels that seem to mark commodities, categories of workers, and at least one official, a 'sanga' or temple administrator. One line records an amount that was 'disbursed' (issued out), another names a reed or reed-related item, and a final line groups a smaller quantity under headings that may mean something like 'supervisor,' 'junior,' or a personnel class. Because the script is at the very dawn of writing, several of the individual signs cannot be read with certainty — this reflects a real accounting record whose exact figures and job titles are still only partly understood today.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) 1. 5(N34) 5(N14) 8(N01), [sign X(?)] 1(N57) DUR(var. b) LAGAB(var. b) RAD(var. a) 2. 3(N34) 1(N14) 7(N01), DUR(var. b) BA 3. 1(N34) 2(N14), UR(var. a) SANGA(var. a) 4. 1(N34) 2(N14) 1(N01), GI (Reverse) 5. — NAM2 ESZDA(?), 3(N57) PAP(var. a) TE TUR
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
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-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.