Position in chronology
MS 3152
About this tablet
This is a small clay administrative tablet from the Uruk period, roughly 3200–3000 BCE, one of the earliest forms of writing in human history — a numerical-pictographic accounting record rather than a connected narrative text. It lists small quantities of livestock (rams, kid-goats, sheep) and an unidentified commodity, apparently tied to a storehouse and handled by an official titled something like 'fattener' (a livestock-tending role attested in this period's economic archives). Tablets like this were the bookkeeping backbone of early temple or palace institutions in southern Mesopotamia, tracking animals moving in and out of storage.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record tallies goods and livestock passing through a storehouse: seven units of one commodity, four rams, one unit of a special category, two large kid-goats, and two more kid-goats marked with a particular sign. The animals are logged as being in a storehouse associated with a place or authority called NUN, delivered under the oversight of an official known as the 'fattener' — someone responsible for livestock in the institution's herds. A second entry adds sixteen sheep to the same storehouse account, again passing through the same delivery process and the same fattener's charge. It is a terse bookkeeping note, not a story — a snapshot of animals and goods being counted and moved.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine7 units of UTUA~a. 4 units of UDUNITA~a (rams). 1 unit of NUN~b. 2 units of GAL~a MASZ2 (large kid-goats). 2 units of |U4x2(N57)| MASZ (kid-goats, U4x2(N57)-marked). In the storehouse (GA2~a1), (of) ZATU647, (of) NUN~a, delivered (GIR3~c) — (by) the fattener (GURUSZDA~a). 16 sheep (UDU~a), (of) ZATU647, storehouse (GA2~a1), (of) NUN~a, delivered (GIR3~c) — (by) the fattener (GURUSZDA~a).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
7(N01) , UTUA~a 4(N01) , UDUNITA~a 1(N01) , NUN~b 2(N01) , GAL~a MASZ2 2(N01) , |U4x2(N57)| MASZ , GA2~a1 ZATU647 NUN~a GIR3~c GURUSZDA~a 1(N14) 6(N01) , UDU~a ZATU647 GA2~a1 NUN~a GIR3~c , GURUSZDA~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC) ?) — MS 3152. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252163) — 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.