Position in chronology
MS 4460
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the later fourth millennium BCE), among the very earliest writing in the world, likely from the Umma region. It records numerical entries — quantities of people or goods followed by commodity or personnel signs, including what looks like a fish-sign and a fire/fuel sign — the kind of tally a temple or institutional household kept for rations, labor, or supplies. The tablet's structure (numbers paired with word-signs, no verbs or sentences) is typical of the earliest bookkeeping notation, not connected prose.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragmentary account tablet. The surviving lines list numerical entries — 4 of one unit tied to a possible 'workers' term, then 1, then more entries of 1s and 2s — most paired with commodity or personnel signs that are too damaged or too archaic to read with certainty. Further down, larger quantities (2 tens-plus-8, 2 tens-plus-4, 3 tens-plus-8, 2 tens-plus-2) appear alongside a 'fish' sign and what may be a total or supervisory notation ('chief/total, skin-sign'), and a separate processing or professional term. Much of the tablet is broken away, so the overall transaction it once recorded cannot be reconstructed in full — only that it was a numerical tally of persons or goods, probably fish or fish-workers, being counted or issued by an institution.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Column/entry 1) [...], [...] 4(N01), X ERIM-workers(?) 1(N01), X [...] [...], [...] [...] 1(N01), [...] 2(N01), [...] 2(N01), X [...] , X X [...] [...], [...] [...], [...] 2(N14) 8(N01), NE(-fuel/fire sign?) [...] fish(KU6) [...] [...], [...] 2(N14) 4(N01), fish(KU6) — total/chief(PAP), SU-sign 3(N14) 8(N01) [...], [...] [...] 2(N14) 2(N01) [...], RAD-sign [...]
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
[...] , [...] 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-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.