Position in chronology
MS 2689
About this tablet
A fragment of one of the world's oldest written documents: a proto-cuneiform administrative account from the Uruk period (late fourth millennium BCE), possibly from Umma in southern Iraq. It is not connected language but bookkeeping — numbers set beside pictographic signs for goods and animals: birds, young goats, and a running figure of 31 sheep, with a possible plow entry. Tablets like this show that writing was invented not for literature or prayer, but to keep track of property.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a broken page from an accountant's ledger, written before sentences existed. Each surviving box pairs a quantity with a commodity: three of something involving an opening or container; three units connected with flax or fiber; two counted alongside signs for birds and young goats; then further entries of five, three, one, and one whose objects are lost to damage. On the other side stands the largest figure — thirty-one sheep — followed by a badly worn entry that seems to mention a plow or plow-team. The rest of the tablet is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [...] 3 [...] , [...] ... KA(?) MA 2. 3 , TAK4, A, flax(?), ŠA 3. 2 , tallies(?) — birds (and) kids 4. [...] , [...] 5. 5 , [...] 6. 3 [...] , [...] 7. 1 , [...] 8. 1 , [...] Reverse(?) 9. 31 (3×10+1) , sheep 10. [...] , plow(-team)(?) ... [...] 11. [...] , [...]
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
[...] 3(N01)# , [...] X KA~a MA 3(N01) , TAK4~a A GU SZA 2(N01) , DUB~b MUSZEN MASZ [...] , [...] 5(N01)# , [...] 3(N01)# [...] , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 3(N14) 1(N01) , UDU~a [...] , APIN~a#? X [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2689. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006110) — 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.