Position in chronology
MS 2862/01
About this tablet
One of the very earliest administrative records in human history, this small clay tablet from the late Uruk or Early Dynastic I period (roughly 3200–2900 BCE) records allocations or assignments of personnel and commodities under named institutional roles — most clearly a 'temple administrator' (sanga). The tablet is photographed from multiple angles showing obverse, reverse, edges, and sides. It almost certainly comes from the city of Umma in southern Iraq and belongs to the same bureaucratic tradition that produced the world's first writing: keeping track of who received what, and how much.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records several short entries pairing numbers with institutional titles or commodity categories. Two units are assigned to the temple administrator (with an additional unclear term); one unit goes under a category combining NA2~a and AB~a; two units are linked to a 'house' sign and PA~a. Several lines are too broken to read. The final legible entry associates a foot-sign, a servant or subordinate (SZUBUR), and a quality marker (SIG, 'low-grade'?) with the RAD~a term again. The rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2, temple-administrator [+RAD~a] [...], [...] 1, NA2~a AB~a 2, house(?) PA~a [...], [...] [...], [...] GIR3@g~c SZUBUR SIG RAD~a
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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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.