Position in chronology
MS 2782/02
About this tablet
A small fragment of one of the world's oldest written documents: a proto-cuneiform administrative account from the Uruk period, around 3300–3000 BCE, possibly from Umma in southern Iraq. The scribe ruled the clay into boxes and recorded quantities of goods — the surviving numbers count 2, 4, and 3 units of items that may include eggs, oil or fat, and something measured in a 'ban' vessel. This is bookkeeping from centuries before writing could record connected speech: numbers and commodity signs, the raw paperwork of an early city's economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a badly broken accounting tablet, and only scraps of the ledger survive. One entry records 2 units of something handed over or deposited; another line mentions what may be eggs together with a fig or a container and perhaps a place; another seems to concern oil or fat. Further down, three entries are still countable: 2 units of an unreadable item, 4 units of something measured with a ban-vessel, and 3 units of a lost commodity. The first and last lines, and most of what each number counted, are broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [...] , [...] 2. [...] 2(N01) [= 2 units] , [...] ... RU [given/deposited(?)] 3. [...] , [...] MA [fig(?)/vessel(?)] KI [place(?)] NUNUZ [eggs(?)] 4. [...] , [...] SUKUD(?) [tall/height(?)] NI [oil/fat(?)] 5. [...] , [...] 6. 2(N01) [= 2 units] , ... [...] 7. 4(N01) [= 4 units] , BAN(?) [a capacity measure/vessel] ... [...] 8. 3(N01) [= 3 units] , [...] 9. [...] , [...] (The tablet is a fragment; the beginnings and ends of nearly every case are broken away.)
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)# , [...] 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-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.