Position in chronology
MS 2782/16
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken clay tablet fragment from the Uruk period, one of the very earliest phases of writing (roughly the later 4th millennium BCE), found or associated with the Umma region in southern Iraq. It is an administrative or accounting record: short entries pairing numerals with commodity or institutional signs — possibly quantities of honey/syrup, a storehouse designation, and other goods or personnel — the kind of terse bookkeeping notation used by early temple or palace administrators to track resources. Because the script is proto-cuneiform (pictographic, not yet phonetic writing), many of the individual signs remain genuinely ambiguous even to specialists, and this tablet's poor preservation compounds that uncertainty.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of an old inventory or ledger, so worn and broken that only pieces of it can be read. The surviving lines list small numbered entries — one records '3 units of honey (or syrup)' measured against a reed-rod or length-unit, another records '2 units' of some goods stored in or associated with a storehouse, and further short entries follow noting quantities of two more items whose exact nature (oil? implements? something else) can no longer be pinned down. The tablet breaks off at both ends, so the opening and closing entries — including whatever totals or names might have identified the transaction — are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] , [...] |LAGAB×SI| (uncertain reading) 3(N01) , honey/syrup (LAL2~a) — GI (reed-measure) 2(N01) , 4(N57) [ZATU759-sign] — storehouse (E2) 2(N01) , NI~a — small/TUR 1(N01) , ISZ~b — BU~a 1(N14) 3(N08) [...] , [...]
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
[...] , [...] [...] , [...] |LAGAB~axSI|#? 3(N01) , LAL2~a# GI# 2(N01) , 4(N57) ZATU759 E2~a 2(N01) , NI~a TUR 1(N01) , ISZ~b BU~a 1(N14) 3(N08)# [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2782/16. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006136) — 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.