Position in chronology
MS 2511/1
About this tablet
A small clay tablet from the very dawn of writing — southern Iraq around 3300–3000 BCE, probably from Umma — written in proto-cuneiform, the picture-based bookkeeping script that preceded true cuneiform. It is a livestock and commodity account: numbers impressed with a round stylus are set beside signs for ewes, she-goats and a ram, alongside other goods whose names we still cannot read. Roughly half the tablet is broken away, so the totals and the name of the official responsible are lost. Documents like this are not literature but the raw accounting of a temple or estate — and they are among the oldest written records of any kind on earth.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The readable entries run something like: a quantity of one large unit, marked as issued; seven units of two commodities whose names are lost to us; a line listing persons; another seven units under a triangular heading-sign; then a bigger figure — three large units and one small — again marked as issued. Further down come the animals: two ewes, twenty-three she-goats, one ram. The reverse carries two more entries of two units each, but the goods they count are broken away, and the rest of the account, including whatever total the scribe drew, is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] , [...] 1(N57) — allotted(?) 7 (N01) , NI~a NE~a [...] , [...] ... persons(?) 7 (N01) , ZATU659(?) LAGAB~a [...] 3 (N34) 1 (N01) , 1 (N57) — allotted, GIŠ(?) [...] [...] , ... [...] 2 (N01) , ewes 2 (N14) 3 (N01) , she-goats 1 (N01) , ram(?) (UTUA~a) (reverse) (no number preserved) , [...] 2 (N01) , [...] 2 (N01) [...] , [...] (Remainder of the reverse broken; the triangular sign ZATU659 stands alone as a heading/label. Left edge bears only the modern collection number MS 2511.)
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
[...] , [...] 1(N57) BA? 7(N01) , NI~a NE~a [...] , [...] X SAG# 7(N01) , ZATU659# LAGAB~a [...] 3(N34) 1(N01) , 1(N57) BA GISZ [...] [...] , X [...] 2(N01) , U8 2(N14) 3(N01)# , UD5~a 1(N01) , UTUA~a# , [...] 2(N01) , [...] 2(N01)# [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2511/1. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006079) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.