Position in chronology
MS 2677
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), one of humanity's earliest writing systems, recovered from the area of Umma in southern Iraq. What survives is an administrative tally: short entries pairing single units (mostly '1') with institutional or commodity signs — beer, a courtyard, a workforce or team, reed, and dependent workers possibly linked to the Subir/Subartu region to the north. It is the kind of terse bookkeeping record produced by an early temple or palace administration to track goods, rations, or labor, but so little of the tablet survives that its full purpose cannot be reconstructed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving fragments amount to a stub of an ancient inventory or ration list. The first few lines are almost entirely lost, but mention a high official or lord, water, and a place or institution called NUN, followed by two signs too damaged to read. A little further on, three units of something are recorded under a heading involving a 'remainder allocation' of beer. The best-preserved section lists a run of single-unit entries: one large vessel (with an uncertain second sign), one 'horn' associated with a courtyard, one unit of a work team or troop, and then reed, a group of dependent workers (possibly people from the Subir region), and a length-measure. The next line mentions a storehouse or container linked again to the NUN institution, with a possible reference to clay. The rest of the tablet — both what came before and what follows — is broken away and cannot be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) 1. [...], [...] EN (lord/high official) — A (water) — NUN(-institution) 2. [...], [...] X X (two illegible signs) 3. [...] 3(units), ŠA (middle/inner) — TAK4 (remainder/allocation) — KAŠ (beer) 4. [...], [...] (broken) 5. 1(unit), GAL (large vessel/'big') — ŠITA(?) (uncertain sign) 6. 1(unit), SI (horn) — KISAL (courtyard) 7. 1(unit), ERIN (troop/team/workforce) 8. GI (reed?) — ŠUBUR (dependent workers/Subarians) — UŠ (length/measure sign) 9. [...], GA₂ (storehouse/container) — ŠE₃ (terminative 'to/until' or grain-marker) — NUN(-institution) — IM(?) (clay/rain sign, uncertain) 10. [...], [...] (broken) 11. [...], [...] (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
[...] , [...] EN~a# A@t NUN~a [...] , [...] X X [...] 3(N01)# , SZA TAK4~a KASZ~c [...] , [...] 1(N01) , GAL~a SZITA~a1? 1(N01) , SI KISAL~b1 1(N01) , ERIN , GI SZUBUR USZ~a# [...] , GA2~a2 SZE3 NUN~a# IM~a#? [...] , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2677. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006098) — 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.