Position in chronology
MS 2782/10
About this tablet
A small fragment of one of the world's oldest kinds of written document: a proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from the Uruk period (late fourth millennium BCE), possibly from Umma in southern Iraq. The surviving entries mention fish and the sign for the Tigris river, alongside numerical notations of 10, about 12, and 6 units of goods whose names are broken away. It comes from the very dawn of writing, when script recorded bookkeeping — deliveries, allotments, rations — rather than language in full sentences, and it hints at an economy of river fishing already under administrative control.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a broken page from a fisheries or provisions ledger. One legible entry concerns fish connected with the Tigris, with a 'great' something whose name is lost; another entry, marked with the sign for an allotment, records small stroke-numerals — three of one kind and one of another — beside administrative signs we can no longer interpret. Then come three quantity lines: 10 units of one item, about 12 of another, and 6 of a third, though the items themselves are broken off. The beginning, several middle lines, and the end of the account are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [...] , [...] ... (traces) 2. ...... , (the) Tigris, ME, ..., fish, RAD, great [...] 3. [...] , [...] ... (traces) 4. [...] , [...] 5. ...... , AN, UR5, water(?), 3 (N57-strokes), NAM2, DI, 1 (N57-stroke), allotted (BA) 6. [...] , [...] 7. [...] , [...] 8. 10 (N14) , [item lost] 9. 10 (N14) + 2 (N01)(?) , [item lost] 10. 6 (N01) , [item lost] 11. [...] , [...]
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
[...] , [...] 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-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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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.