MS 4505

~3100 BCE·Uruk Period·P006309

About this tablet

This small lenticular clay tablet from the late Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), likely from the city of Umma in southern Iraq, is one of the earliest administrative records in human history — made before writing had developed into a fully readable script. A temple or palace official impressed numerical signs and pictographic commodity signs into wet clay to track quantities of fish, birds, livestock, and possibly seeds allocated to or managed by a storehouse official (the SANGA). The tablet is badly damaged but preserves a glimpse of the proto-cuneiform bookkeeping system that gave birth to writing itself.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

The tablet records several commodity entries: approximately 50 units of fish (under a 'courtyard' heading), 30 units of birds, 30 units of another category now illegible, and smaller counts of further goods whose signs are too damaged to read. One entry appears to mark a disbursement. A clearer entry near the end records 2 units of seed (or a similar commodity) for consumption or ration purposes. The final legible lines record 20-plus units of livestock under the authority of a storehouse official. The last line gives a further large total. Several entries in the middle are too broken to read.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

[...] 5 large units, fish (KISAL context) 3 large units, birds [X] 3 large units, [GIR3-type commodity] [X] 1 large unit, [MUD] [X] [BU] [disbursement?] DA [X] 1 large unit 3 small units, [AN] [X] [...] [...] , [...] 2 small units, seed(?) [EN] [PAP] [GU7 — consumption/ration?] 20 large units, 3 [N57 units], storehouse-official, sheep-and-(?) 1 [N45] 20 large units,

Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

Transliteration

[...] 5(N14)# , KU6~a KISAL~b1
3(N14)# , MUSZEN# X
3(N14)# , GIR3~c# X
1(N14) , MUD# X BU~a
, BA DA~a X
1(N14)# 3(N01)# , AN X [...]
[...] , [...]
2(N01)# , NUMUN# EN~a# PAP~a#
, GU7#?
2(N14) , 3(N57) SANGA~a |(UDU~axTAR)~b|
1(N45) 2(N14) ,

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4505. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006309) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).

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Related sources

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