Position in chronology
MS 4570
About this tablet
One of the earliest written documents in human history, this small clay tablet dates to the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE) and appears to be an administrative livestock record, possibly from the region of Umma in southern Iraq. A scribe used impressed numerals and pictographic signs to track animals — likely goats and perhaps a large felid or wild animal — alongside what may be notations for enclosures, hides, and distributions. Tablets like this represent the very birth of writing: not literature or religion, but the practical need to count and manage institutional property. The reverse bears a cylinder-seal impression, identifying the official or institution responsible for this record.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a small livestock account: 2 goats (or similar animals) associated with a large enclosure, followed by entries that are now too damaged to read clearly. Then: 1 she-goat in a pen or stall, with a category marker; 1 entry apparently involving a lion or large animal and an enclosure; and finally 1 larger unit involving hide, sinew, and what may be a disbursement of liquid or water. Several signs in the middle are broken away and cannot be recovered. The reverse carries a seal impression identifying the responsible official or institution.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 [animals?], [...] X goat(s) [large enclosure?] [...], X UMUN2 1 she-goat, stall/pen, [category marker?] 1 [large enclosure?], lion-[animal?] 1 (large unit), hide/skin, sinew, [allotted?], [water/liquid?]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(N01) , [...] X MASZ2# |U4x3(N57)| [...] , X UMUN2 1(N01) , UD5~a TUR3~a ME~a 1(N01)# , |U4x3(N57)| PIRIG~b1? 1(N14) , SU~a SA~c BA# NI~a#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4570. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006339) — 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.