Position in chronology
MS 4460
About this tablet
This is one of the oldest types of written documents in human history — a proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), likely from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records quantities of commodities — most clearly fish, and possibly male workers — distributed or received by an institution, using the punched and incised numerical notations that preceded fully developed writing. The tablet is heavily damaged and only partially legible, but even in this state it illustrates the very earliest bureaucratic record-keeping: administrators pressing numbers and commodity signs into clay to track goods. Tablets like this are among the first steps humanity took toward literacy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives of this tablet records a series of commodity entries. One line lists 4 units of what appear to be male workers or men. Several entries track fish: one batch of 28, another of 24, the latter associated with signs suggesting processing or rationing (PAP~a SU~a — possibly 'total' or 'net' fish). A larger tally of around 38 units appears in a damaged line. Many entries are too broken to read. The rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] 4(N01) , [X] ERIM~a[?] 1(N01) , [X] [...] [...] , [...] [...] 1(N01) , [...] 2(N01) , [...] 2(N01) , [X] [...] , [X X] [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 28 , [NE~a?] [...] fish [...] [...] , [...] 24 , fish PAP~a SU~a 38[+?] [...] , [...] [...] 22[?] [...] , RAD~a [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] 4(N01)# , X ERIM~a#? 1(N01) , X [...] [...] , [...] [...] 1(N01) , [...] 2(N01) , [...] 2(N01) , X [...] , X X [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 2(N14) 8(N01) , NE~a#? [...] KU6~a [...] [...] , [...] 2(N14) 4(N01) , KU6~a PAP~a SU~a 3(N14) 8(N01)# [...] , [...] [...] 2(N14)# 2(N01)# [...] , RAD~a [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4460. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006281) — 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.