Position in chronology
MS 4590/1
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the later fourth millennium BCE), one of the earliest forms of writing in the world — a system of numerical impressions (circles and wedges pressed with a round stylus) combined with a handful of pictographic signs. It appears to be an administrative record, most likely a tally of goods or produce (possibly grain or a festival-related commodity, given the EZEN 'festival' sign) tracked by an institutional official, the SANGA. Because so little of the tablet survives intact, its exact transaction — what was counted, by whom, and for what purpose — cannot be fully reconstructed, but the surviving numerals and signs place it squarely among the earliest bureaucratic records of ancient Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Only fragments of this account survive. The legible parts record a series of quantities — one entry of roughly forty-some units, another of about three tens plus one, and a smaller entry of a single unit — followed by signs that are hard to interpret with certainty, possibly a container or category marker (LAGAB). Later lines mention what may be a leading official or institution (EN) and a festival-related sign (EZEN), then a further entry of three tens. Toward the end there is a reference to something being 'consumed' or issued as a ration (GU7), and the tablet closes with a note involving a count of days or a time unit, described as 'new' or freshly recorded, and overseen or recorded by a temple administrator (SANGA) as part of the archival record (DUB). Everything else — the identities of the parties, the exact commodities, and most of the surrounding text — is lost to breakage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 1(N42) 1(N25) , [...] 3(N39) 1(N24) , LAGAB(?) [...] 1(N01) , X [...] , [...] [...] , [...] EN X 3(N14) , |EZEN×X| [...] , [...] , SI X GU7 [...] , [...] , |U4×6(N57)|(?) GIBIL SANGA DUB
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
[...] 1(N42~a)# 1(N25) , [...] 3(N39~a)# 1(N24) , LAGAB~a? [...] 1(N01) , X [...] , [...] [...] , [...] EN~a# X 3(N14) , |EZEN~axX| [...] , [...] , SI# X GU7# [...] , [...] , |U4x6(N57)|#? GIBIL SANGA~a DUB~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4590/1. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P200003) — 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.