Position in chronology
MS 3884
About this tablet
This is one of the oldest written documents in human history — a small clay accounting tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), most likely from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records quantities of livestock or dairy products under the supervision of a temple official, using the earliest numerical notation known. The object is part of the Schøyen Collection in Oslo and belongs to a handful of tablets that show writing emerging as a tool of institutional bookkeeping, centuries before it was used for literature or law. The surface is heavily damaged and many signs cannot be read, but the surviving entries — a cattle-pen, a cow, a temple administrator, and distribution notations — are typical of Uruk-period administrative records.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives on this badly broken tablet is a tally of livestock or dairy goods managed by a temple official. One entry records a quantity associated with a cattle-pen, a cow, and a temple administrator. Another line seems to record a distribution. Several lines are too damaged to read. The numbers use the large round signs of the earliest known numerical system, and the rest of the entries are lost to breakage and erosion.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [ŠUBUR?] [...] , [...] KU X [...] , [...] 1(N34) , X X 1(N34)[?] , X [DUB?] X 2(N34) , cattle-pen / cow / temple-administrator 2(N14)[?] [...] , IB [...] [...] , [...] [...] 1(N34) 1(N14) , BA[?] [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] [...] , [...] SZUBUR# [...] , [...] KU~b1# X [...] , [...] 1(N34) , X X 1(N34)# , X DUB~a# X 2(N34) , TUR3~a SAL SANGA~a 2(N14)# [...] , IB~a [...] , [...] , [...] [...] 1(N34)# 1(N14) , BA# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 3884. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006276) — 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.