Position in chronology
MS 4505
About this tablet
This is a small proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), one of the earliest forms of writing in human history — not yet a language transcription but a system of pictographic signs and numeral notations used to track goods and labor. It appears to record quantities of commodities such as fish, birds, seed-grain, and possibly rations, associated with institutional roles like a sanga (temple/storehouse official) and an EN (a high-status lord or office-holder), tied to a courtyard (KISAL) and a sheep-pen. Tablets like this come from the earliest bureaucratic archives of southern Mesopotamian cities such as Umma, where scribes were inventing a way to record economic transactions before writing could yet capture spoken language.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This weathered little tablet is an early accounting record — a list of goods and quantities kept by an official bookkeeper roughly five thousand years ago. As best as can be made out, it tallies numbers of fish or fish-workers tied to a courtyard, some birds, and other goods marked by signs that may indicate disbursement or delivery. Later entries mention seed-grain associated with a high official (an 'EN'), something described as 'consumed,' and a final tally connected to a sanga — a temple or storehouse administrator — in relation to a sheep-pen. The tablet is broken and worn in several places, so a few lines and their quantities cannot be recovered; what survives is a fragment of one of humanity's very first written business records.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 5(N14): fish(-workers/commodity), (of) the courtyard (KISAL) 3(N14): birds, ... 3(N14): GIR3(-sign), ... 1(N14): MUD(-sign), ..., BU(-sign) [.]: disbursed(?) (BA), DA(-sign), ... 1(N14) 3(N01): AN(-sign), ... [...] [...] , [...] 2(N01): seed-grain (NUMUN) of/for the EN(-official)(?), PAP(-sign/marker) [.]: consumed(?) (GU7) 2(N14) 3(N57): the sanga-official of the sheep-pen (UDU×TAR) 1(N45) 2(N14): [...]
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
[...] 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-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.