Position in chronology
MS 2782/10
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken fragment of a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the late 4th millennium BCE), one of the very earliest phases of writing anywhere in the world. What survives are a few isolated entries — a reference to the Tigris river, a sign for fish, a term possibly denoting dependent workers or animals, and several numeral notations — the kind of tally an official at an early Mesopotamian settlement (possibly near Umma) would have kept to track goods, labor, or rations. Because the script is still pictographic and largely undeciphered, and because so little of the tablet survives, most of its original meaning is irrecoverable; it is a fragment of bookkeeping whose full story is lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives of this tablet is a series of disconnected ledger entries, most of them broken away. One legible line mentions the Tigris river together with a fish sign and a 'great' or 'large' qualifier — perhaps a fish-related commodity or a group tied to the river. Another line pairs a term that may mean 'dependent workers' or 'animals' with 'water,' a count of 3, and a disbursement notation ('1... allotted'). The remaining lines preserve only bare numbers (1, 1+2, 6) with no commodity or recipient surviving, and the rest of the tablet — front and back — is too damaged or worn to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [...], [...] ... (broken) 2. — Tigris (IDIGNA) — ME(~a) — ... — fish (KU6~a) — RAD(~a) — great/large (GAL~a) 3. [...], [...] ... (broken) 4. [...], [...] (broken) 5. — AN — dependent-workers/UR5(~a) — water (A) — 3(N57) — NAM2 — DI — 1(N57) — disbursed (BA) 6. [...], [...] (broken) 7. [...], [...] (broken) 8. 1(N14)#, [...] (broken) 9. 1(N14)# 2(N01)#?, [...] (broken) 10. 6(N01)#, [...] (broken) 11. [...], [...] (broken)
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
[...] , [...] X , IDIGNA ME~a X KU6~a RAD~a GAL~a [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] , AN UR5~a A 3(N57) NAM2 DI 1(N57) BA [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N14)# , [...] 1(N14)# 2(N01)#? , [...] 6(N01)# , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2782/10. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006130) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-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.