Position in chronology
MS 2693
About this tablet
A small fragment of one of the world's earliest written documents, from the Uruk period (c. 3350–3000 BCE), possibly from Umma in southern Iraq. It is an administrative account of small livestock — sheep and young goats — counted in the archaic numerical system, with most entries broken away. Writing at this date was pure bookkeeping: no sentences, just numbers, commodity signs, and category markers pressed and incised into clay by an official tracking herd animals.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is a torn corner of a livestock ledger. The first lines are mostly lost, though one entry mentions sheep and another carries a string of category signs, one of which may refer to oil or fat. Then two entries are readable: three units of something marked with the NUN sign — perhaps a grade or source category of animals — and two young goats. A further entry follows but its sign is illegible, and the last line is broken away entirely. The back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [...] , [...] sheep 2. [...] , [...] DA, NI (oil?), GIŠ₃ 3. [...] , [...] 4. 3 (N01) , NUN 5. 2 (N01) , kids (young goats) 6. ... , X [...] 7. [...] , [...] (The reverse is uninscribed.)
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
[...] , [...] UDU~a# [...] , [...] DA~a# NI~a GISZ3~b# [...] , [...] 3(N01) , NUN~b# 2(N01) , MASZ2# , X [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2693. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006114) — 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.