Position in chronology
MS 2504
About this tablet
One of the earliest written documents in human history, this small clay tablet dates to the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE) and comes from southern Iraq. It is an administrative accounting record — a proto-cuneiform tally of sheep and possibly other goods, organized under institutional or personnel headings. The signs are pictographic predecessors of later cuneiform, scratched by a temple bookkeeper tracking livestock allocations. Its survival gives us a direct window into the world's first bureaucracy, predating the invention of narrative writing by centuries.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records several batches of sheep: nine units of one category, seven of another, then a group of sixteen — the largest entry, possibly linked to a tablet-keeper or scribe's account. Interspersed are references to a high-ranking woman (NIN), reed, and what may be a temple administrator (SANGA). The entries are brief commodity tallies, not sentences; they read roughly: '9 sheep [of a certain class]; 7 sheep [of that class]; reeds; Lady/NIN, fine/SIG; official categories; 16 sheep on record; fine/SIG, Lady/NIN.' Several signs remain too damaged or too poorly understood to translate precisely.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine9 [units], MAR~a, NA~a[?], sheep, ZATU749~b 7 [units], sheep, ZATU749~b [...], ZATU821, reed/GI [...], NIN, SIG [...], TE, RAD~a, SANGA~a 16 [units], sheep, tablet/DUB~a, ZATU749~b [...], SIG, NIN
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
9(N01) , MAR~a NA~a#? UDU~a ZATU749~b 7(N01) , UDU~a ZATU749~b , ZATU821 GI , NIN# SIG , TE RAD~a SANGA~a 1(N14) 6(N01) , UDU~a DUB~a ZATU749~b , SIG NIN
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2504. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006072) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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.