Position in chronology
MS 4463
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken fragment of a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the later 4th millennium BCE), among the very earliest writing in the world. It comes from an early accounting record — the numerals (N01, N14) and paired sign-groups are the format of a tally, listing quantities of some commodity or livestock against institutional or personal designations, but so little of the surface survives that the transaction itself cannot be reconstructed. Tablets like this one show the bureaucratic roots of writing: scribes at cities like Umma used clay and a reed stylus to track goods and labor for temple or palace institutions long before writing recorded language in full sentences.
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 first line records a quantity of '2' next to a two-sign notation (SIG RAD), likely naming a commodity, quality, or category — perhaps wool or a similar processed good. The next few lines are almost entirely destroyed, though one preserves a possible reference to a cattle-pen or storage institution and another repeats the number '2'. Further down, two more numeral entries survive — one large amount (N14) and a small unit quantity (1) — followed by another single unit, but the words identifying what was being counted or for whom are lost. In short: a badly damaged ledger entry, tracking amounts of goods or animals, whose full content cannot be recovered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2(N01) , SIG RAD~a(#?) [...] , [...] |AB~b׊A3~a1|(#?) [...] , [...] 2(N01)# [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] 1(N14)# [...] 1(N01)# , [...] [...] 1(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) , SIG RAD~a [...] , [...] |AB~bxSZA3~a1|#? [...] , [...] 2(N01)# [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] 1(N14)# [...] 1(N01)# , [...] [...] 1(N01)# , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4463. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006284) — 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.