Position in chronology
MS 2862/02
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period, likely from the Umma region in southern Iraq — among the very earliest writing in human history, from roughly 3300–3100 BCE. It appears to be a tally or ration account: numerals (4, 5 units) are entered against commodity or personnel markers, and the last surviving line names a 'sanga' — the chief temple administrator — suggesting the record concerns goods or people under his authority. So little of the sign sequence survives that the exact transaction (livestock, agricultural implements, or personnel) cannot be pinned down with certainty.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is a fragment of an account tablet. Several lines are almost entirely lost, but partial entries remain: one line records a quantity of 4 units, another records 5 units alongside a mark for something described as 'small' or 'junior.' A further entry pairs a horn-shaped sign with a large numeral (43) next to what may be a hoe or tool sign — though the true meaning of that entry is unclear. The last legible line mentions the sanga, the chief administrator of a temple household, suggesting he oversaw whatever goods, animals, or workers this tablet was recording. The rest of the text — including whatever identified the actual commodity or transaction — is broken away and lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...], [...] SAG (head/person) X [...], [...] X [...], [...] X [...] 4(N01), [...] 5(N01), X TUR [...] , SI |(U8×TAR)~b| AL [...], [...] SANGA TE RAD [...]
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
[...] , [...] SAG# X [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] X [...] 4(N01)# , [...] 5(N01) , X TUR [...] , SI |(U8xTAR)~b| AL# [...] , [...] SANGA~a# TE# RAD~a# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2862/02. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006149) — 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.