Position in chronology
MS 2900/18
About this tablet
This is a tiny, badly broken clay fragment from the Uruk period (roughly the later fourth millennium BCE) — one of the world's earliest written records, from an administrative office tracking livestock, most likely at or near Umma in southern Iraq. What survives are numeral notations (using the archaic proto-cuneiform number signs, not yet syllabic writing) next to the sign for 'male sheep,' plus a mysterious recurring marker read NUN. It is essentially a fragment of an accounting tally sheet — proof that even 5,000 years ago scribes were counting flocks and recording totals, though almost all of the context that would tell us whose flock, or why, is now lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This chipped clay tablet fragment is part of an ancient tally sheet. Only scraps survive: one line records a quantity — 'one ten and four ones' (14) — next to something now broken away; the next line repeats that same count of 14 against an entry for 'male sheep' (rams); another line has a broken quantity marked with the notation NUN, whose exact bookkeeping meaning we can't pin down; and a final surviving line shows a larger tally — two of the big counting units, five tens, and five ones — attached to an entry that is also lost. In short: a scrap of an Uruk-period livestock count, with most of the actual bookkeeping context broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Line 1) [...], [...] (Line 2) 1(N14) 4(N01), [...] (Line 3) 1(N14) 4(N01), male sheep (UDUNITA) (Line 4) [...], NUN(-marked entry) (Line 5) [...], [...] (Line 6) [...] 2(N34) 5(N14) 5(N01), [...]
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.
Engine notes
read from photo4 uncertain terms ↓
- UDUNITA~a — Proto-cuneiform sign probably denoting a type of oven, kiln, or hearth installation; its precise referent in the accounting context is debated. May indicate a commodity type processed by heat, or an institutional unit associated with such a facility.
- NUN~b — Proto-cuneiform sign; in later Sumerian means 'prince' or relates to Eridu, but in Uruk-period administrative texts likely functions as a quality or provenance marker for the commodity being tallied. Context here is too fragmentary to determine which meaning applies.
- N14, N01, N34 — Proto-cuneiform numerical signs whose absolute values depend on the commodity and metrological system in use. N14 conventionally = 10× N01 in the sexagesimal system, but ratios differ for grain, area, capacity, etc. N34 is a higher-order sign. Without knowing the commodity, exact quantities cannot be confidently stated.
- 2(N34) 5(N14) 5(N01) — If sexagesimal: 2×600 + 5×10 + 5×1 = 1,255 units. But the metrological system is uncertain, so the total may represent a very different absolute quantity.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows a small, heavily worn clay tablet photographed from multiple angles (obverse, reverse, edges, and top), marked with the collection number MS 2900/18 written in modern ink on its edge. The obverse (central image, upper group) shows two horizontal registers separated by a ruled line. In the upper register I can discern two groups of impressed circular signs — consistent with the large round N14 numerals — and what appears to be a taller, more complex incised sign on the right, plausibly corresponding to UDUNITA~a. Below the ruling, I can make out several vertical wedge strokes consistent with N01 numerals (four or five strokes visible). The reverse (lower large image) shows a cluster of rounded impressed signs — possibly the large numerical total 2(N34) 5(N14) 5(N01) — though surface erosion makes individual sign boundaries difficult to confirm. The top fragment (uppermost image) and the two edge views show very little readable content due to damage and angle. Overall, the visual reading broadly aligns with the provided transliteration: repeated N14+N01 groupings on the obverse and a larger numerical cluster on the reverse are consistent with what I see, though I cannot verify the NUN~b sign or confirm the precise N01 counts from this resolution. No transliteration-photo discrepancies are flagged beyond what erosion makes unverifiable.
Generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 14, 2026 · 1964 in / 973 out tokens
Transliteration
[...] , [...] 1(N14)# 4(N01)# , [...] 1(N14)# 4(N01)# , UDUNITA~a# [...] , NUN~b [...] , [...] [...] 2(N34)# 5(N14)# 5(N01)# , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2900/18. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006226) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.