Position in chronology
MS 2862/01
About this tablet
A small clay account tablet from the very dawn of writing, the Uruk period (c. 3350–3000 BCE), probably from Umma in southern Iraq. An anonymous administrator ruled the surface into boxes and pressed in round number-marks beside signs for officials and institutions — a temple administrator, a storehouse, a cattle-pen — recording deliveries or disbursements of some commodity. This is bookkeeping, not literature: writing at this stage existed almost solely to track goods, and tablets like this one are among humanity's earliest documents.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger with numbered entries. Two units are booked against the temple administrator together with the commodity or category written RAD; a second entry is broken away. One unit is entered for NA₂ of the cattle-stall (or institution), and two units for the household or storehouse under the PA official. Another entry or two is lost to damage. The reverse carries the closing line — a summary naming Šubur (likely the responsible official) along with the GIR₃, SIG and RAD designations — but its beginning is broken, so the grand total does not survive.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. 2 (units) — the SANGA (temple administrator/official), RAD (commodity/designation) 2. [...] — [...] 3. 1 (unit) — NA₂, the AB (cattle-stall/institution) 4. 2 (units) — the E₂ (household/storehouse), the PA (overseer/category mark) 5. [...] — [...] Reverse 6. [...] — [...], GIR₃-gunû, Šubur, SIG, RAD (closing/total entry)
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) , SANGA~a RAD~a [...] , [...] 1(N01) , NA2~a AB~a 2(N01) , E2~b PA~a [...] , [...] [...] , [...] GIR3@g~c SZUBUR SIG RAD~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2862/01. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006148) — 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.