Position in chronology
MS 4493
About this tablet
This is an Uruk-period administrative tablet — one of the very earliest forms of writing in human history, from roughly the late fourth millennium BCE — recording quantities of small livestock: ewes, rams, she-goats, kids, and lambs, along with some further accounting entries involving grain or flour and storage compartments. It comes from the archive of a large institution (temple or palace household) in or near Umma, tallying herd animals under numeral notations rather than in connected sentences — the archaic bookkeeping that preceded literature by centuries. The reverse of the tablet is uninscribed, as the photograph shows.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a herd-count. It lists 2 large-count plus 5 ewes, 2 large-count plus 5 rams, and 2 large-count she-goats, followed by a partly broken entry involving a day-sign and a livestock subcategory, then more lambs and about 5 kids. A further line records some flour or ground grain assigned to a storage bin, and a final, badly worn line names two more terms whose relationship (perhaps 'not' or 'without') can't be pinned down. The back of the tablet was left blank by the scribe.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2(N14) 5(N01), ewes (U8) 2(N14) 5(N01), rams (UDUNITA) 2(N14), she-goats (UD5) 2(N01) [...], |U4x1(N57)| BAR KIR11 [...], BAR KUR-designation, lambs (SILA4) [...] 5(N01), kids (MASZ2) , flour/ZI — UB (storage compartment) , ZATU624 — not(?) DA — ZATU752 (reverse: uninscribed / blank)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
2(N14) 5(N01) , U8 2(N14) 5(N01) , UDUNITA~a 2(N14) , UD5~a 2(N01)# [...] , |U4x1(N57)|# BAR# KIR11# [...] , BAR KUR~a SILA4~c [...] 5(N01)# , MASZ2 , ZI~a UB , ZATU624~c NU DA~a ZATU752 ,
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4493. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006296) — 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.