Position in chronology
MS 2900/25
About this tablet
This is a tiny, badly worn clay fragment from the proto-cuneiform period at Umma, one of the very earliest phases of writing (Uruk period, c. 3200 BCE). What survives are a handful of numeral notations (the vertical wedge for 'one') paired with a few administrative signs — a title sign possibly meaning 'lord' or overseer, and a closing entry naming an enclosure or storehouse together with a sign for 'egg' or 'seed'. It is almost certainly a small accounting tablet — a tally of goods or produce under an official's authority — but so much of it is broken away that the full transaction cannot be reconstructed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This little clay chip is what's left of an ancient accounting note. Most of it is broken off, but a few entries survive: some lines count out '1' of something, one line seems to name an official or supervisor, and the last surviving line records something tied to a storage building or pen, followed by a sign usually meaning 'egg' or 'seed' — though whether that means real eggs, seed-grain, or some other category isn't clear. The rest of the tablet, front and back, is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] 1(N01) — EN(?) [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01)# , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] (closing line): AB(-enclosure) — NUNUZ(-egg/seed)
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
[...] , [...] 1(N01)# , EN~a# X [...] 1(N01) , X [...] 1(N01)# , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] , AB~b NUNUZ~a2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2900/25. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006233) — 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.