Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 031
About this tablet
This is a small numerical-administrative tablet from the Uruk/Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), one of the very earliest forms of writing in the world, and among the first accounting documents ever created. It consists of terse case entries — a number followed by one or two signs — recording quantities (perhaps of goods, land, or labor) tied to titles or officials, including what looks like a 'herald' and a final line totaling barley. Because the script is proto-cuneiform, many of the individual signs (MU, SZU, UB, NIM) cannot yet be phonetically read with certainty; scholars can identify the sign shapes but not always their spoken value, so this text reads more like a structured ledger than connected prose. It is a glimpse of bureaucratic record-keeping in one of humanity's first cities, likely from an institutional household or temple economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short bookkeeping tablet, more a set of ledger entries than a story. The first line records a quantity — 3 units of one measure plus 2 of another — next to an entry naming a 'herald' along with a damaged second sign whose meaning (a place, a quality, or something else) is lost. The next two lines each record 1 unit against an entry beginning with a sign conventionally read 'MU', followed in one case by a sign meaning something like 'in the hand of' or 'received', and in the other case by text that is now broken away entirely. The next line is almost completely lost — only a partial number survives. Further down, a fragmentary entry mentions what might be a storage bin, followed by a doubled sign whose function isn't clear, all in a badly broken line. The tablet closes with a final entry: 6 units of barley. Several lines are too damaged to reconstruct fully.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 3(N14) 2(N01) , [entry:] herald(?) — NIM~b1 (damaged sign, quality/place uncertain) 2. 1(N14) , MU(?) — SZU 3. 1(N14) , MU(?) — [......] 4. [4(N01)] , [......] 5. [numeral broken] , UB(?) [......] |SZU&SZU| (compound/doubled sign) 6. 6(N14) , barley
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
3(N14) 2(N01) , NIMGIR NIM~b1#? 1(N14) , MU# SZU 1(N14) , MU# [...] [4(N01)] , [...] , X UB# [...] |SZU&SZU| 6(N14) , SZE~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 031. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005098) — 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.