Position in chronology
MS 2782/02
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken fragment of a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the later 4th millennium BCE), likely from the Umma region. What survives is a series of short entries pairing small numerals (2, 4, 3) with commodity or measure signs — the standard format of an early accounting record, probably tracking rations, goods, or livestock issued or received. So little of the surface survives that the specific transaction — what was counted, for whom, and by whom — cannot be recovered; it stands as one tiny surviving scrap of the earliest bureaucratic writing system in human history.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet fragment is a piece of an ancient inventory or ration list. The parts that survive show a pattern of counting: quantities of two, four, and three units are recorded next to signs that likely name containers, measures, or goods, alongside what might be place or category markers. Almost all of the surrounding context — what exactly was being counted, who supplied it, and who received it — has broken away or is too worn to read. What's left is a bare skeleton of numbers and a few commodity signs from an early bookkeeping record.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] 2(N01) , [...] ... RU [...] , [...] MA KI NUNUZ(?) [...] , [...] SUKUD(?) NI [...] , [...] 2(N01) , ... [...] 4(N01) , BAN(?) ... [...] 3(N01) , [...] [...] , [...]
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)# , [...] X RU [...] , [...] MA KI NUNUZ~a1 [...] , [...] SUKUD@g~d#? NI~a [...] , [...] 2(N01) , X [...] 4(N01) , BAN~b#? X [...] 3(N01)# , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2782/02. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006122) — 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.