Position in chronology
MS 2693
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken fragment of a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period, likely from Umma, recording quantities of livestock — sheep and goats — organized into ruled cases on the surface. Texts like this belong to the earliest stratum of writing anywhere in the world, roughly the late fourth millennium BCE, when Mesopotamian institutions were first developing a system of pictographic signs and numerical notation to track herds, rations, and goods. Only a few numbers and animal signs survive legibly; the scribe's larger accounting scheme — what was being counted, for whom, and why — is lost with the missing portions of the tablet.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of an old inventory list, so damaged that only a few entries can be made out. One line mentions sheep, though the surrounding words are missing. Another line has some signs — possibly wood, oil, or a related item — that can't be pinned down for certain. Two entries do survive with numbers: three of some marked category of livestock, and two goats. A final line begins with an unclear sign before breaking off, and the rest of the tablet is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] sheep [...] , [...] DA / oil(?)/NI / wood-sign(GIŠ₃) [...] , [...] 3(N01) , NUN (quality/category marker) 2(N01) , goats , X [...] [...] , [...]
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
[...] , [...] 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-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.