Position in chronology
MS 2507
About this tablet
This is one of the oldest written documents on earth — a proto-cuneiform accounting tablet of the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), probably from Umma in southern Iraq. It is not language in the sense of sentences: each ruled box holds a number impressed with the round end of a stylus, followed by one or two signs identifying what is being counted and which household, official, or settlement it belongs to. Names like E₂ ("household"), EN ("lord"), and URU ("settlement") appear, but the system is still so early that we can read the quantities far better than the commodities. The tablet is broken down its left side, so several of the numbers are gone.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is a ledger, entry by entry: four units against the estate-and-overseer account; three units for IŠ-RAD; one unit marked "received, small"; one unit for the divine/settlement account; a lost quantity assigned to a lord; a further ten-unit entry for IM; ten units for the estate's NAGA-SI account; a larger entry of two big units plus thirty for a commodity written with the ḪI-sign; and finally one very large unit plus sixty, whose label has broken off. The left edge of the tablet is gone, so some of the figures can no longer be recovered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (col. i) 1. 4(N15)? — E₂ (household/estate) PA (overseer/section-mark) 2. 3(N15)? — IŠ RAD 3. 1(N15)? — ŠU ("hand/received") TUR ("small") 4. 1(N15)? — AN URU (sky/divine; settlement) 5. [… (numeral lost)] — [… ] EN (lord/institutional head) 6. [… ] 1(N14) — IM 7. 1(N14) — E₂ (household/estate) NAGA SI 8. 2(N50) 3(N14) — |ḪI×1(N57)| ZATU756 9. 1(N45) 6(N14) — [ … (entry lost) ] (The left portion of the tablet is broken away; the numerals of lines 5–6 and the designation of line 9 are lost. No further inscribed text is preserved on the reverse beyond the large numerical impressions corresponding to the closing entries.)
Our translation engine — Opus 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-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.