Position in chronology
MS 4512
About this tablet
One of the oldest types of writing in human history: a small administrative clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), recording quantities of goods and labor in the earliest proto-cuneiform script. Entries appear to count birds, workers ('men'), and other commodities or groups using simple impressed numerals. The final line — 15 units of 'men' under a summary sign — suggests this may be a tally of a labor gang or workforce. Tablets like this were the original purpose of writing: not literature or law, but the bookkeeping of a large temple or palace economy in ancient southern Iraq.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records several short entries, most only partially readable. Early lines note quantities of 4, 1, and 1 units of damaged or unreadable items, followed by 2 birds (species unknown). Several lines in the middle are too broken to read. Near the bottom, 2 men are listed alongside an unidentified sign, and the final entry tallies 15 men under what appears to be a summary heading. The rest is lost or too damaged to recover.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4(N01)[?] [...] , [...] 1(N01)[?] [...] , [...] 1(N01)[?] , X 2(N01) , MUŠEN[?] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] 1(N01)[?] , [...] 2(N01) , men (ERIM~a) X 1(N14) 5(N01) , men (ERIM~a) — total/sum (KIŠ)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
4(N01)#? [...] , [...] 1(N01)#? [...] , [...] 1(N01)#? , X 2(N01) , MUSZEN#? [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] 1(N01)# , [...] 2(N01) , ERIM~a X 1(N14) 5(N01) , ERIM~a KISZ
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC) ?) — MS 4512. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006312) — 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.