Position in chronology
MS 2694
About this tablet
A fragment of one of the world's oldest kinds of documents: a proto-cuneiform administrative account from the Uruk period, around 3300–3000 BCE, possibly from Umma in southern Iraq. A bookkeeper recorded small quantities of goods and deliveries — beer, fish, birds, and other commodities — in ruled boxes, some entries tied to an 'en' (a lord or temple head) and a festival. Writing at this date was pure accounting: numbers and commodity signs, not sentences, and the tablet shows literacy in its earliest, most practical form.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger fragment. After a lost opening entry, it logs: 2 for the en-official in connection with a festival; 1 unit of fish and fowl as a levy; then, after a gap, 2 and 3 units of a KU-commodity, one lot linked with beer; 2 units brought in or delivered. Further down: 9 units of something tied to a place of origin, 1 unit deposited, 11 units allotted and counted in bundle-tallies, 3 more units in a broken entry, and 1 unit of something now lost. The rest of the entries are broken away. In short: a scribe's running tally of small deliveries of foodstuffs and goods moving through an institution's stores.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Proto-cuneiform account; entries read as: quantity , sign group) [...] , [...] (entry broken) 2(N01) , EN EZEN — 2: the lord/en-official (of the) festival 1(N01) , KU6 MUSZEN MASZ — 1: fish (and) bird (as) goat-equivalent/levy(?) [...] , [...] (entry broken) 2(N01) , KU AN — 2: ... (KU-commodity) (of) AN 3(N01) , KU KASZ — 3: ... (KU-commodity), beer 2(N01) , DA DU — 2: ... delivered/brought(?) [...] , [...] (entry broken) 9(N01) , NA KI NAB(?) — 9: ..., place/origin ...(?) 1(N01) , RU — 1: given/deposited(?) 1(N14) 1(N01) (= 11) , AN BA GI — 11: allotted (to/of) AN, (in) reed-bundle/tally units 3(N01) , AN GISZ3 [...] — 3: AN ... [...] 1(N01) , [...] — 1: [...] [...] , [...] (rest of entries broken)
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
[...] , [...] 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-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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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.