Position in chronology
MS 2694
About this tablet
This small, arrow-shaped clay fragment is a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), one of the very earliest forms of writing anywhere in the world, found or associated with the region of Umma in southern Iraq. It is not a story or a letter but an accounting record — a grid of ruled cases, each pairing a small numeral notation with one or two pictographic signs standing for goods, titles, or categories: fish, birds, goats, beer, an official called EN, a festival, and other terms whose exact bureaucratic meaning is still debated by specialists. Only about half the tablet survives, and even the readable entries resist a fully confident translation because the writing system at this early stage recorded bare nouns and numbers without grammar, leaving the relationships between quantities and goods to context we can no longer fully recover. It is a fascinating glimpse of accounting at the dawn of literacy, even though its precise content — rations? offerings? festival supplies? — cannot be pinned down with certainty.
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 ancient tally sheet, organized as a grid of little boxes, each holding a number next to one or two picture-signs for goods or people. The surviving entries read something like: an entry (lost); '2 units — the lord/high priest, festival'; '1 unit — fish, bird, goat (or interest)'; another lost entry; '2 units' and '3 units' of something paired with a sky/star sign and with beer; '2 units — [a term], delivered'; a lost entry; '9 units — [a term], at a place, [uncertain]'; '1 unit — given/deposited'; a larger count paired with 'sky/star,' 'disbursed,' and 'reed(?)'; '3 units — sky/star, wood(?), (rest lost)'; '1 unit, (rest lost)'; and a final line that is entirely broken away. In short, it's a partial inventory or ration list — quantities of fish, birds, goats, beer, and other goods logged against titles or locations — but so much of the tablet is missing or worn that several of the entries can't be pinned down with certainty.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [...] — [...] 2. 2 (units): EN ("lord"/high priest or institutional head) — EZEN (festival) 3. 1 (unit): KU6 (fish) — MUŠEN (bird) — MAŠ (goat/interest) 4. [...] — [...] 5. 2 (units): KU~b1 (sign uncertain) — AN 6. 3 (units): KU~b1 (sign uncertain) — KAŠ (beer) 7. 2 (units, sign damaged): DA — DU ("brought/delivered," or a personnel designation) 8. [...] — [...] 9. 9 (units): NA — KI (place/locative) — NAB(?) (reading uncertain, sign damaged) 10. 1 (unit): RU ("given/deposited," function uncertain) 11. 1(N14) 1(N01) (units, two different numeral signs): AN — BA ("disbursed/allotted") — GI (reed[?], sign only partly preserved) 12. 3 (units): AN — GIŠ3 (sign damaged) — [...] 13. 1 (unit, sign damaged): [...] 14. [...] — [...]
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
[...] , [...] 2(N01) , EN~a EZEN~b@t 1(N01) , KU6~a MUSZEN MASZ [...] , [...] 2(N01) , KU~b1 AN 3(N01) , KU~b1 KASZ~c 2(N01)# , DA~a DU [...] , [...] 9(N01) , NA~a KI NAB#? 1(N01) , RU 1(N14) 1(N01) , AN BA GI 3(N01) , AN GISZ3~b# [...] 1(N01)# , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2694. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006115) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.