Position in chronology
MS 4563
About this tablet
This is a small clay administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), one of the very earliest forms of writing, found at or near Umma in southern Iraq. It is a tally of goods and quantities — numerals paired with pictographic signs for things like fish, a storehouse, a boat or container, barley, and water — the kind of bookkeeping record kept by an early temple or institutional household to track rations, produce, or deliveries. Much of the sign sequence is damaged or not yet confidently identified, which is typical for this earliest stratum of cuneiform writing, where even specialists cannot always recover the intended reading. The tablet is a fragment of the accounting apparatus that helped invent writing itself, not a literary or narrative text.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally sheet, not a story: someone recorded a series of quantities against goods. The first line lists '7' units tied to a storage yard associated with fish. Several following lines record small quantities — 2, 2, 6, and more — next to signs that are too damaged or too poorly understood to translate confidently; one of them may refer to a boat or storage vessel, another to a storehouse. Near the end, a line pairs a possible 'garden plot' or measured-area sign with something involving silver, and the tablet closes with an entry recording a quantity of barley alongside terms that might mean a 'remainder allocation' involving water — perhaps referring to irrigation or a leftover disbursement. The final line appears blank or illegible. Overall it reads as a fragmentary inventory or ration list from an early accounting office, most of whose specific meaning is now lost to damage and to gaps in modern understanding of this very early writing system.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 7(N14) — courtyard/storage-compound (of) fish 2. [...] 2(N01) — [unidentified signs] 3. 2(N14) — [unidentified signs] 4. 2(N14) — boat/container-vessel, border/side(?) 5. 6(N14) — storehouse, [unidentified sign] 6. 2(N01)(?) — [...], [unidentified sign] 7. [...] 2(N01) — [unidentified sign], [...] 8. 1(N01) — [unidentified sign], [...] 9. [count uncertain] — garden-plot/area(?), [unidentified sign], silver(?) 10. 2(N45) 4(N01) — barley, remainder/allocation, water 11. [blank/illegible]
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
7(N14) , KISAL~b1# KU6~a# X 2(N01) , X X 2(N14) , X X 2(N14) , MAR~a ZAG~a#? 6(N14) , E2~a X 2(N01)? , [...] X [...] 2(N01)# , X [...] 1(N01)# , X [...] , SAR~a X KU3~a# 2(N45) 4(N01) , SZE~a TAK4~a A ,
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4563. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006332) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.