Position in chronology
MS 4462
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the later 4th millennium BCE), one of the very earliest forms of writing — proto-cuneiform. It appears to be an administrative account, tallying commodities and personnel with numeral notation (circular and wedge-shaped impressions) alongside pictographic signs for things like plow-work, garden plots of barley, and small livestock such as ewes and she-goats. Texts like this come from the archives of early temple or palace institutions in southern Mesopotamia (here associated with Umma) that tracked labor, land, and animals long before writing could record connected sentences — it is essentially a spreadsheet in clay.
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, so most entries are incomplete. What survives lists quantities against a series of items: two units of something linked to a 'day' or 'sun' marker, two units tied to plow-work, nine units associated with a string of signs (NA, AN, DI, AN) whose meaning is unclear, three units of another uncertain good, one unit recorded under a 'lion' and 'workers' entry, three plots of barley land, an entry involving a 'head' or chief category, one unit under a sign pairing whose sense is lost, and a further entry mentioning 'IB.' Near the bottom the tablet is on firmer ground: six ewes and forty-six she-goats are recorded. The rest of the tablet — beginning and end — is broken away and cannot be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...], [...] [...] 2(N01), [...] U4 ("day/sun" sign) [...] 2(N01), APIN ("plow") [...] 9(N01), NA — AN — DI — AN [...] 3(N01), [...] KUSZU2(?) 1(N01), PIRIG ERIM ("lion" + "workers/troops") 3(N01), SAR ŠE ("garden/plot" of barley) [...] 1(N01), [...] SAG [...] ("head/chief") 1(N01), DA ZATU710 , URI IB [...] 6(N01), 8 (ewes) 4(N14) 6(N01), goats (female caprids) [...], [...] [...] 4(N01) [...], [...]
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
[...] , [...] [...] 2(N01)# , [...] U4# [...] 2(N01)# , APIN~a [...] 9(N01)# , NA~a AN# DI AN [...] 3(N01)# , [...] KUSZU2~c#? 1(N01) , PIRIG~b1 ERIM~a 3(N01) , SAR~a |SAR~axSZE~a| [...] 1(N01)# , [...] SAG# [...] 1(N01) , DA~a ZATU710 , URI3~a IB~a [...] 6(N01) , U8# 4(N14) 6(N01) , UD5~a# [...] , [...] [...] 4(N01)# [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4462. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006283) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.