Position in chronology
MS 3152
About this tablet
This is one of the oldest types of written documents in human history — a proto-cuneiform livestock account from the Uruk period of southern Iraq, roughly 3300–3000 BCE, before writing had fully developed into a language-recording system. A temple or palace administrator tallied different categories of sheep and goats — distinguished by sex, size, or quality — recording quantities and a final total of 16 animals, probably as a receipt or disbursement record. The last lines appear to record a delivery or transfer, noted with signs meaning something like 'storehouse' and 'foot-delivery.' Tablets like this represent the very birth of writing: invented not for literature or law, but for counting animals and grain.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
7 ewes/sheep. 4 rams. 1 animal of a special grade. 2 large billy-goats. 2 goats of another category. [Notation of storehouse, delivery origin, and responsible official.] Grand total: 16 sheep — delivered to (or from) a storehouse, with a foot-delivery notation, under the authority of a named official. The rest of the administrative details are encoded in signs whose exact meaning remains debated.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine7 [animals], sheep (UTUA~a) 4 [animals], rams (UDUNITA~a) 1 [animal], [quality/type: NUN~b] 2 [animals], large (GAL~a) billy-goat(s) 2 [animals], [|U4x2(N57)|] goat(s) [entry:] GA2~a1 ZATU647 NUN~a, foot-delivery, GURUSZDA~a 16 [animals total], sheep (UDU~a) ZATU647 GA2~a1 NUN~a, foot-delivery, GURUSZDA~a
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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.