Position in chronology
MS 2520
About this tablet
A small clay accounting tablet from the Uruk period (late fourth millennium BCE), possibly from Umma in southern Iraq — among the very earliest written documents in human history. It once recorded quantities of goods, perhaps wool or a related commodity, in the ruled boxes typical of archaic bookkeeping, but the surface is now so worn and broken that only a single numeral and a couple of signs can still be made out. Even in this ruined state it is a witness to the birth of writing, which began not with literature but with administration.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger entry, most of which is now illegible. One line records a quantity of something — the number '1' in one of the archaic counting systems survives, but the name of the item is lost. Another line mentions a term connected with wool or a quality grade (SIG) together with a designation whose meaning is no longer known (RAD). The remaining six or so entries are too damaged to read: only faint traces of signs remain where quantities and commodities once stood.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [......] , [......] 2. [...] , [...] SIG RAD [...] — "... wool(?)/SIG-quality ... RAD ..." 3. [......] , [......] 4. 1(N02) [...] , ... [...] — "1 (unit of the N02 series) of [a commodity now lost] ..." 5. ... [...] , [......] 6. , ... [......] 7. [......] , [......] 8. [......] , [......] (The entries are almost entirely broken; only the numeral 1(N02), the sign pair SIG RAD, and isolated damaged sign traces survive.)
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
[...] , [...] , [...] SIG RAD~a [...] [...] , [...] 1(N02)# [...] , X [...] X [...] , [...] , X [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2520. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006088) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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.