Position in chronology
MS 4489
About this tablet
This is one of the oldest written documents in human history, dating to the late Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), possibly from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It is a small clay administrative tablet — the kind of everyday accounting record that scribes produced to track allocations of grain, livestock, and other commodities within a large institutional household, perhaps a temple or its dependent economy. The tablet is organised in a grid of boxes, each cell containing a quantity sign paired with a commodity or category sign, which is the characteristic format of proto-cuneiform bookkeeping. Because proto-cuneiform script is not yet fully deciphered, many of the commodity signs remain uncertain, but the document clearly records distributions of what appear to be cattle portions, barley, and fish against numerical tallies.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records several allocations: approximately 3 units of an unidentified commodity category (ZATU710), followed by two entries of a larger measure each associated with what may be cattle carcasses and a ration-distribution marker, with smaller quantities of barley and a mixed or processed commodity (HI~a). A further group records 3 units of the same ZATU710 category alongside an entry of roughly 11 larger units of barley, 4 units of HI~a, and a final line combining about 12 units of barley, HI~a, fish, and a courtyard or threshing-floor notation. Several signs are too damaged or too poorly understood to read with certainty; the overall picture is a multi-commodity distribution tally, probably one day's or one transaction's worth of institutional accounting.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 [units N01], ZATU710 2(N39~a) 1(N24) — cow/cattle? [LAGAB×BIR3?] — ration-allocation (GAR) 1(N24) — BAR[?] — [ŠAxHI~a]? — barley[?] 2(N39~a) 1(N24) — cow/cattle? [LAGAB×BIR3?] — ration-allocation (GAR) 1(N39~a) — GUG2? 1(N24) — [ŠAxHI~a] — HI~a 3 [units N01] — ZATU710 SI ME~a 1(N14) 1(N01) 2(N39~a) — barley 4(N39~a) — HI~a 1(N14) 2(N01) 1(N39~a) — barley, HI~a, fish, courtyard/threshing floor
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
3(N01) , ZATU710 2(N39~a) 1(N24) , AB~a |LAGAB~axBIR3~b|? GAR 1(N24) , BAR#? |(SZAxHI@g~a)~a|#? , SZE~a#? 2(N39~a) 1(N24) , AB~a |LAGAB~axBIR3~b|? GAR 1(N39~a) , GUG2? 1(N24) , |(SZAxHI@g~a)~a| , HI@g~a 3(N01) , ZATU710 SI ME~a 1(N14) 1(N01) 2(N39~a) , SZE~a 4(N39~a) , HI@g~a 1(N14) 2(N01) 1(N39~a) , SZE~a HI@g~a KU6~a KISAL~b1
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4489. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006292) — 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.