Position in chronology
MS 4486
About this tablet
One of the oldest written documents in human history, this small clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE) is an administrative accounting record, almost certainly from the city of Umma in southern Mesopotamia. It tallies quantities of barley, fish (including carp and fish products), cattle-pen animals, ducks or geese, and sheep under named categories or responsible officials. This is the kind of tablet that scribes produced by the thousands to manage the redistribution economy of early Mesopotamian temples and palaces — tracking who received what, in what quantity, and under whose authority. It is remarkable because it dates to the very birth of writing itself, when the cuneiform script was still purely pictographic and not yet used to record language.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an inventory record covering several commodity categories. A large quantity of barley is logged first. Then come entries for carp: two units distributed, and another batch of three units plus a fractional measure. Several entries track allocations under a kinship or official category ('brother/kin'), including quantities linked to a fish-product sub-category. On the reverse, a total of twenty units are recorded against a livestock enclosure associated with fish; one unit goes against an unidentified commodity (ZATU846); two units record female ducks or geese; one unit records sheep; and four mid-order units cover a tall or long-measure commodity of uncertain type. The tablet closes with a heading or summary notation. Much of the precise numerical detail is uncertain because the exact metrological systems for each commodity have not been fully decoded.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (Face A): [Large quantity] + [intermediate quantity] + [large quantity] + [mid-order quantity] + [mid-order quantity], barley 2 [units], carp — disbursed 3 [units], 4 [fractional units] carp [Mid-order count] + [unit] + [mid-order count], MU — brother/kin; great GIR 2 [units], brother/kin ZATU714 [fish product/sub-category] 3 [mid-order units] [...], brother/kin — great [...], [...] carp? fish Reverse (Face B): 20 [units], cowshed — fish + fish — 1 [higher unit] 1 [unit], ZATU846 — 1 [higher unit] 2 [units], KI@n — female duck/goose 1 [unit], sheep — [great × X] 1 [mid-order unit], cowshed — GIR 4 [mid-order units], |(SUKUD+SUKUD)~b| — X [Total/heading:] MU
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(N39~a) 1(N57) 1(N39~a) 1(N24) 1(N26) , SZE~a 2(N01) , SUHUR BA 3(N01) , 4(N57) SUHUR 1(N08) 1(N57) 1(N08) , MU SZESZ~a MAH~a GIR~b 2(N01) , SZESZ~a ZATU714 |ZATU759xKU6~a| 3(N08)# [...] , SZESZ~a MAH~a [...] , [...] SUHUR#? KU6~a 2(N14) , AB~b |KU6~a+KU6~a| 1(N02) 1(N01) , ZATU846 1(N02) 2(N01) , KI@n UZ~a 1(N01) , UDU~a |MAH~axX| 1(N08) , AB~b GIR~b 4(N08) , |(SUKUD+SUKUD)~b| X , MU
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4486. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006289) — 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.