Position in chronology
MS 2514
About this tablet
A small pillow-shaped accounting tablet from the very dawn of writing, around 3300–3000 BCE, probably from Umma in southern Iraq. An anonymous bookkeeper recorded modest quantities of goods and animals — beer, barley, an oil-like commodity, two nanny goats and a young kid — apparently in connection with officials of a temple household. Writing at this stage was pure bookkeeping, not language: numbers, commodity signs, and titles, with no grammar. Tablets like this are among humanity's earliest written documents.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short ledger with seven entries. It books 2 units of an unidentified commodity; a further entry of oil(?) and barley under obscure markers; 1 jar of beer; a line naming two officials — a 'great one' and a temple administrator; 2 nanny goats; 1 young goat charged to (or issued by) the chief administrator; and finally 3 portions of the barley-and-oil commodity. In today's terms: a stock or disbursement slip listing drink, grain, fat, and a few goats moving through a temple office, signed off by its senior staff. Several sign-groups on it cannot yet be deciphered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2(N01) — ...(ZATU694), DA DA 2. — NI (oil/fat?), barley, AN, DI, RAD 3. 1(N01) — beer (in a) ...-vessel(?) (ZATU737×E?) 4. — the GAL-official (and) the SANGA-administrator 5. 2(N01) — nanny goats, DI, A 6. 1(N01) — young goat (kid): the chief GAL-official (of?) the SANGA-administrator 7. 3(N01) — BAR(-portions), NI (oil/fat?), barley, AN
Our translation engine — Fable 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
2(N01) , ZATU694~c DA~a DA~a , NI~a SZE~a@t AN DI RAD~a 1(N01) , KASZ~c |ZATU737xE~a|? , GAL~a SANGA~a 2(N01) , UD5~a DI A 1(N01) , MASZ2 GAL~a SANGA~a GAL~a 3(N01) , BAR NI~a# SZE~a@t AN
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2514. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006082) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-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.