Position in chronology
MS 2695
About this tablet
One of the world's oldest accounting documents, from the Uruk period (late fourth millennium BCE), probably from Umma in southern Iraq — written before cuneiform could record connected language. A bookkeeper pressed numeral impressions into the clay and paired them with picture-like signs for goats, birds, sheep, officials, and disbursements, ending with a running total of 45 sheep. Tablets like this show that writing was invented not for literature or religion but for tracking livestock and rations in an early urban economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger of small livestock disbursements. The readable entries run: 2 head connected with a goat(?) and a man; 1 for an entry involving Šubur; 1 counted by the reed-bundle unit, a bird; 2 handed over to the minister; 3 more of an item now broken away; then a damaged stretch. Further entries record single items marked as 'allotted,' one under an emblem or standard, 4 of the SIG7 commodity, 1 tied to a place of origin, and 2 more of an unclear item. The account closes on the reverse with the grand figure: 45 sheep. The intervening broken cases can no longer be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Archaic Uruk-period account; entries are ideographic case-by-case notations, not connected prose) 1. [...] 2 — goat(?), man/personnel 2. 1 — AN, Šubur, HI (person or designation) 3. 1 — GI(-unit), bird, NA 4. 2 — (for) the SUKKAL (minister/official), deposited(?) 5. 3 [...] — SIG7 [...] 6. [...] — [...] 7. 1 — allotted(?), KIŠIK(?) 8. 1(N57) — allotted(?), IB, URI3 (standard/emblem?) 9. 1 [...] — ... [...] 10. 1 — AN ŠU2 11. 4 — SIG7 12. 1 — NA, KI (place/origin marker?) 13. 2 — GA2, DUR2, ... 14. [...] — [...] KA 15. 45 (4×10 + 5) — sheep, ZATU819 [...] (probably the summary total)
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)# , MASZ#? LU2 1(N01) , AN SZUBUR HI@g~a 1(N01) , GI MUSZEN NA~a 2(N01) , SUKKAL RU 3(N01)# [...] , SIG7# [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) , BA# KISZIK~a? , 1(N57) BA IB~a URI3~a 1(N01)# [...] , X [...] 1(N01) , AN SZU2 4(N01) , SIG7 1(N01) , NA~a KI 2(N01) , GA2~a2 DUR2 X [...] , [...] KA~a 4(N14) 5(N01) , UDU~a ZATU819# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2695. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006116) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-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.