Position in chronology
MS 2681
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from the very dawn of writing, drawn up around 3300–3000 BCE, probably at Umma in southern Iraq. A bookkeeper impressed numbers and simple pictographs into damp clay to record small numbers of livestock — ewes, young goats, and oxen — likely a delivery or inventory for an institutional household. Texts like this are among humanity's earliest written documents: writing here is not literature but arithmetic, invented to keep track of animals and goods.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a livestock tally: 2 ewes; 28 of something whose entry is now damaged; 5 young goats (part of that line is lost); 1 ox; then two entries too broken to read; then 1 more ox marked with a qualifier — perhaps a grade or category we can no longer identify. One compartment is empty or effaced, and the final entry survives only as illegible traces. In short, a herd count or delivery record of sheep, goats, and cattle from an ancient accounting office, with several entries lost to damage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2(N01) , U8# — 2 ewes 2. 2(N14) 8(N01) , X [...] — 28 ... [...] 3. [...] 5(N01) , MASZ2 — [...] 5 kids (young goats) 4. 1(N01) , GU4# — 1 ox 5. , [...] — [...] 6. [...] , [...] — [...] 7. 1(N01) , GU4# NE~a — 1 NE-ox (ox of NE-quality?) 8. , — (case empty or effaced) 9. , [...] X — [...] ... (traces)
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) , U8# 2(N14) 8(N01) , X [...] [...] 5(N01) , MASZ2 1(N01) , GU4# , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) , GU4# NE~a , , [...] X
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2681. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006102) — 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.