Position in chronology
MS 3164
About this tablet
One of the earliest written documents in human history, dating to the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE) in ancient Mesopotamia — a time when writing had only just been invented as a tool for managing temple and palace economies. This small, rounded clay tablet records quantities of goods or personnel associated with an institution; the final line appears to be a summary total linked to a high-status official (EN) and what may be a labor force or troop contingent (ERIN). The signs are proto-cuneiform — pictographic precursors to the wedge-shaped script that would develop over the next millennium. The surface damage and the archaic nature of the sign inventory make many entries impossible to read with certainty, but the tablet is a vivid survival of the very earliest bureaucratic record-keeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A list of quantities — several entries of one unit each against goods or categories that are now too damaged or too archaic to read with confidence, including at least one entry for a commodity that may be a vessel or container (MAR). The final surviving line records a larger quantity against what appears to be a designation involving a high official or lord (EN), a workforce or troop group (ERIN), and a compound term whose meaning remains unresolved. The rest of the entries are broken away. In modern terms: a partial inventory or ration list, most of it lost, closing with what looks like a summary line tallying resources under an institutional authority.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[N] , [...] [N] , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , MAR~a [N] , EN~a [...] [N] , [...] 1(N14) , KIŠ |BU~a+DU6~a| ERIN EN~a X
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[N] , [...] [N] , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , MAR~a# [N] , EN~a [...] [N] , [...] 1(N14) , KISZ |BU~a+DU6~a| ERIN EN~a X
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC) ?) — MS 3164. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252175) — 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.