Position in chronology
MS 2686
About this tablet
This is a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), among the very earliest writing on earth, found at or near Umma in southern Iraq. It is not a connected narrative but a numerical tally — rows pairing a quantity sign with a commodity or category sign, the standard format of the world's first bookkeeping. The surviving entries mix unidentified commodity signs with clearly readable livestock (a ram, a goat), suggesting this fragment recorded rationed goods or animals passing through an early institutional household or temple economy. Much of the tablet is broken away, so the full accounting context cannot be recovered.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragmentary accounts tablet, little more than a list of tallies. It records 9 units of a commodity marked KA-RAD-DI, 7 units of something called BU-NA, and 1 larger unit of an entry beginning RAD-DI before the text breaks off. A few more lines are too damaged to read. Further down, the scribe notes 2 large units plus 6 units of a 'small/young' item associated with a bird-sign, then 5 units of something illegible, then more breaks. Near the end come three clean entries: 6 units of a category called NUN, 1 ram, and 1 goat. The rest of the tablet — what came before and after these entries — is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] — [...] 9(N01) — KA~a, RAD~a, DI 7(N01) — BU3, NA~a 1(N14) [...] — RAD~a, DI# [...] [...] — X [...] (blank/entry) — LAGAB~b(?) [...] 2(N14) 6(N01) — TUR, |MUŠENxPAP~a|(?), TI 5(N01) — X [...] [...] — [...] 6(N01) — NUN~b 1(N01) — UDUNITA~a (ram / male sheep) 1(N01) — MAŠ2 (goat) [...] — [...]
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
[...] , [...] 9(N01)# , KA~a RAD~a DI 7(N01) , BU3 NA~a 1(N14) [...] , RAD~a DI# [...] [...] , X [...] , LAGAB~b? [...] 2(N14) 6(N01) , TUR |MUSZENxPAP~a|? TI 5(N01) , X [...] [...] , [...] 6(N01) , NUN~b 1(N01) , UDUNITA~a 1(N01) , MASZ2 [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2686. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006107) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-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.