Position in chronology
MS 2782/09
About this tablet
A fragment of one of the world's oldest kinds of written document: a proto-cuneiform administrative account from the Uruk period, around 3300–3000 BCE, possibly from Umma in southern Iraq. A bookkeeper recorded small quantities — ones, twos, a six — of goods such as oil, plant fodder and perhaps textiles, each entry boxed in its own case. Writing at this date was pure accounting, not language as we know it, and the tablet is too worn and broken for most of the commodities to be identified with certainty.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a running tally, most of it now illegible. Where the surface survives we can read single entries: one or two units apiece of various goods — something connected with oil or fat, two units of an unidentified item, one unit of plant fodder, one entry apparently marked as a shortfall of textiles, and a larger batch of six of something now lost. Near the end an entry involves a category of grain with a qualifier that may mean 'head' or 'first'. The beginning, several middle lines, and the end are broken away, and the back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, single column; each entry: numeral , commodity/sign) 1. [...] , [...] NI (oil/fat?) 2. [...] , [...] 3. 2 , IŠ (function undetermined) 4. 2 , ... [...] 5. [...] , [...] 6. 1 , GIR3 7. 1 , U2 (fodder/plant?) GIR3-gunû 8. 2 [...] , [...] NI (oil/fat?) 9. 1 , deficit(?): textile(?) 10. 1 , NE [...] 11. 6 , ... [...] 12. 2 , ... [...] 13. [...] , [...] 14. [...] , [...] ŠE.NAM2 (grain category), SAG (head/first?) 15. [...] , [...] (reverse uninscribed)
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
[...] , [...] NI~a# [...] , [...] 2(N01) , ISZ~b? 2(N01)# , X [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01)# , GIR3~c 1(N01) , U2~b GIR3@g~b 2(N01)# [...] , [...] NI~a#? 1(N01) , LA2 TUG2~a? 1(N01) , NE~a# [...] 6(N01)# , X [...] 2(N01)# , X [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] |SZE~a.NAM2|# SAG# [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2782/09. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006129) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
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.