Position in chronology
MS 2507
About this tablet
This is a fragment of an administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3350–3100 BCE), among the very earliest writing in human history, found at or near ancient Umma in southern Iraq. It is a tally: a scribe recorded a series of quantities — using the sign-based number system of the time rather than digits as we know them — against short labels that likely name commodities, personnel categories, or institutions (a storehouse, an overseer, 'the lord', clay or writing boards, natron, a horn). The tablet cannot be read as connected prose; it is bookkeeping, the kind of record that let early Mesopotamian institutions track goods and workers before literature or narrative writing existed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an inventory sheet. Line by line, a scribe logged small counts of things against short category labels: four units tied to a storehouse and an overseer; three units against two signs whose meaning is lost to us; one unit each for a person or role called 'SZU' marked 'junior/small', and one for something linked to 'AN' and 'city'. The next line, naming 'the lord', is broken where the number should be. Further down: one unit of clay or writing-board material, one unit tied to the storehouse alongside natron and what may be 'horn', then a larger tally of two-plus-three units against a compound sign and an otherwise unknown sign, and finally a last entry of roughly seven units whose accompanying label has broken away entirely. In short: a set of quantified entries in an early accounts ledger, several of them now unreadable.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 4(N15)? — storehouse (E2~a), overseer/classifier (PA~a) 2. 3(N15)? — ISZ~b, RAD~a 3. 1(N15)? — SZU, junior/small (TUR) 4. 1(N15)? — AN, city/settlement (URU~a1) 5. [...] — [...], the lord/high official (EN~a) (damaged) 6. [...] 1(N14) — clay/tablet-board (IM~a) 7. 1(N14) — storehouse (E2~a, damaged), NAGA~a, horn/SI 8. 2(N50) 3(N14) — compound sign |HIx1(N57)|, ZATU756 (sign not otherwise identified) 9. 1(N45, damaged) 6(N14) — [...] (broken)
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
4(N15)? , E2~a PA~a 3(N15)? , ISZ~b RAD~a 1(N15)? , SZU TUR 1(N15)? , AN URU~a1 [...] , [...] EN~a# [...] 1(N14) , IM~a 1(N14) , E2~a# NAGA~a SI 2(N50) 3(N14) , |HIx1(N57)| ZATU756 1(N45)# 6(N14) , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2507. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006075) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.