Position in chronology
MS 2900/31
About this tablet
This is a tiny, badly broken fragment of a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period, found in the region of Umma in southern Iraq — among the very earliest writing in human history, dating to roughly 3200 BCE. What survives is not a connected text but a string of numeral notations (units counted one by one, then a larger tally) followed by a commodity sign conventionally read as 'salt' and a possible summary or supervisory marker. It likely once recorded a count of goods or rations under an official's authority, but almost all identifying context has broken away.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Only scraps of this record survive. The first lines are almost entirely gone except for a repeated count of '1' before each break — probably individual items or persons being tallied, one per line. The last surviving line gives a larger count, '13' in this notation, followed by a damaged word or name and then what may be the sign for salt. Whatever specific transaction or ration list this described is now lost along with the rest of the tablet.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] 1(N01) [...] , [...] 1(N01) [...] , [...] 1(N01) [...] , [...] [...] 1(N14) 3(N01) , [...] PAP~a X X MUN~a1(?) [...]
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)# [...] , [...] 1(N01)# [...] , [...] 1(N01)# [...] , [...] [...] 1(N14)# 3(N01)# , [...] PAP~a X X MUN~a1# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2900/31. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006239) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.