Position in chronology
MS 4568
About this tablet
This is a small proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the later fourth millennium BCE), one of the earliest kinds of writing in the world. It appears to be an economic account tracking quantities of barley and fish, possibly disbursed to or associated with a storage area or courtyard (kisal) of an institution — perhaps a temple or redistributive household — along with a category of dependent workers or animals (ur5). The bottom line, with its distinct round and combined numeral signs, is a summary total tying the itemized entries above to a final tally. Much of the text is broken or worn, so the precise transaction — rations, deliveries, or stock counts — cannot be reconstructed with certainty.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragmentary bookkeeping tablet. The beginning of each line is lost, but what survives lists small quantities — numbers followed by commodity or category markers: something involving barley, fish, possibly clay or sealed material, and a group described with a term that could mean 'workers' or 'dependents' or, less likely, 'dogs.' Several entries mention a courtyard or storage area, suggesting these goods were being tracked in or out of an institutional compound. A ruled line separates the itemized entries from a final total line, which records a combined quantity of barley, fish, and the same storage area, tallying up what came before. The tablet is too damaged and the sign values too archaic to say more specifically what event — a delivery, ration, or inventory — this record represents.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) [...] 2(N01) , [...] KI MUD BU~a [break in surface / signs eroded] [...] X , IM~a [...] SZE~a ("barley") [...] , [...] X UR5~a [...] , [...] X KU6~a ("fish") KISAL~b1 ("courtyard/storage-area") (ruled dividing line) (Reverse / totals line) 3(N14) 2(N01) 2(N39~a) , SZE~a ("barley") DA~a KU6~a ("fish") KISAL~b1? ("courtyard/storage-area")
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(N01)# , [...] KI MUD# BU~a# [...] X , IM~a [...] SZE~a [...] , [...] X UR5~a , [...] X KU6~a# KISAL~b1 , 3(N14) 2(N01) 2(N39~a) , SZE~a# DA~a# KU6~a# KISAL~b1#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4568. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006337) — 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.