Position in chronology
MS 2900/23
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken clay fragment from the Uruk period (roughly the later 4th millennium BCE), likely from Umma in southern Iraq, bearing some of the very earliest writing known — proto-cuneiform. The surviving grid of boxed entries records quantities (mostly the numeral '1' and '2') paired with commodity or category signs, several of which resemble later signs for 'beer' (KAŠ), a container or vessel term (MA), and a possible 'total received' notation (SAGŠU). It is almost certainly an administrative account — a tally of rations, goods, or personnel — but so little of the tablet survives that the exact transaction it records cannot be reconstructed.
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 ancient accounting tablet, so worn and broken that most of its entries are lost. What remains looks like a list of small quantities — mostly '1' or '2' of something — set against a series of short labels: one entry may read 'received, such-and-such,' another pairs the numeral 1 with what might be a jar or measure of beer, and a further line records 2 units of the same 'beer-and-vessel' combination. A final legible entry gives the number 2 next to a sign that could be a divine or sky marker, or simply an administrative tag. Everything before, between, and after these fragments is broken away, so the overall purpose of the tally — rations, deliveries, or something else — cannot be recovered from what survives.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Case 1) [...] , [...] (Case 2) [...] , SZITA~a1(?) SI (Case 3) [...] , X SAGSZU (Case 4) [...] , [...] AL (Case 5) [...] , [...] (Case 6) [...] 1(N01) , SZU X (Case 7) 1(N01) , KA~a KASZ~c MA (Case 8) 2(N01) , KASZ~c MA [...] (Case 9) 2(N01) , AN [...] (Case 10) [...] , [...] (Case 11) [...] , [...]
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
[...] , [...] [...] , SZITA~a1#? SI# [...] , X SAGSZU# [...] , [...] AL# [...] , [...] [...] 1(N01)# , SZU# X 1(N01) , KA~a KASZ~c# MA 2(N01) , KASZ~c# MA# [...] 2(N01) , AN# [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2900/23. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006231) — 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.