MS 2964

~3100 BCE·Uruk Period·P006250

About this tablet

This small lenticular clay tablet is one of the oldest kinds of written documents in human history — a proto-cuneiform accounting record from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), probably from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records quantities of at least two different commodities, one of which is almost certainly barley, alongside two as-yet-undeciphered commodity signs (ZATU837~a and ZATU837~b). The signs are not yet a true writing system in the conventional sense — they are numerical notation tied to commodity pictograms, the earliest stage of Sumerian record-keeping. What we are looking at is essentially the world's oldest accounting: institutional management of grain and other goods, impressed into wet clay with a stylus and a round-ended reed.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

The tablet records several large deliveries or allocations of goods. One entry logs a very large quantity of barley. Two further entries record substantial amounts of two other commodities whose names we cannot yet read — labelled here by their sign codes. A fourth entry returns to barley in a smaller quantity. The final line appears to give a combined total across all entries. The precise absolute quantities depend on which counting system was in use for each commodity, so exact figures in modern units remain uncertain.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

1(N45) 5(N34) — barley (SZE3) 1(N45) 3(N48) 3(N34) 5(N14) — [commodity: ZATU837~a] 1(N48) 8(N34) 3(N14) 6(N01) — [commodity: ZATU837~b] 1(N48) 8(N34) 1(N14) 2(N01) — barley (SZE3) 3(N45) 1(N48) 5(N34) 4(N14) — [total / summary line?]

Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

Transliteration

1(N45) 5(N34) , SZE3
1(N45) 3(N48) 3(N34) 5(N14) , ZATU837~a
1(N48) 8(N34) 3(N14) 6(N01) , ZATU837~b
1(N48) 8(N34) 1(N14) 2(N01) , SZE3
3(N45) 1(N48) 5(N34) 4(N14) ,

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2964. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006250) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).

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Related sources

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