Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 030
About this tablet
This is one of the earliest administrative tablets in human history, dating to the late Uruk or Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), from a site in southern Iraq. It records quantities of commodities — almost certainly grain, probably barley — alongside signs indicating officials, land categories, and possibly distribution events. The proto-cuneiform writing system used here had not yet fully developed into the later Sumerian script, so many individual signs remain only partially understood. Tablets like this are the very first documents ever written: bureaucratic records from a temple or palace storehouse keeping track of agricultural resources, long before any connected narrative or personal name can be reliably read.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records several batches of what appears to be barley: 22 units listed with signs suggesting the grain is 'new' and associated with a vessel or container type, with a possible disbursement notation; a broken entry follows; then a line naming a plow-worker or agricultural official, an EN-type administrator, and several further category signs whose exact meaning is still debated. A further entry records 25 units of barley; then 3 large units on their own; and finally a combined total of quantities of barley associated with a field and a reed category. The numbers and commodities are clear; the precise institutional meaning of the personnel and category signs remains uncertain.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine20 + 2 [units]: barley(?), new(?), [commodity/vessel type URI3~a], distributed(?); [...]: [...]; [...]: |hand+hand|(?), plow-[worker?], EN-[official?], AN, ME, hand [...]; 20 + 5 [units]: barley(?); 3 [large units]: 20 + 1(N19) + 2 [units]: |hand+hand|, barley(?), field/GAN2, GI(reed/reed-bundle?)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(N14) 2(N01) , SZE~a# GIBIL# URI3~a# BA#? [...] , [...] , |SZU&SZU|# APIN~a EN~a AN ME~a SZU [...] 2(N14)# 5(N01)# , SZE~a# 3(N04) , 2(N14) 1(N19) 2(N01) , |SZU&SZU| SZE~a GAN2 GI
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 030. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005097) — 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.