Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 076
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken administrative tablet from the Uruk/Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3200–2900 BCE), one of the earliest phases of writing anywhere in the world. What survives is a short list of numbered entries pairing quantities with pictographic signs — the kind of record a temple or palace accountant kept to track deliveries of goods, rations, or labor. Because so much of the surface is broken away and the sign readings themselves are still debated by specialists, we can see the skeleton of an accounting entry (a number, a commodity or institution sign, a possible official's title) without being able to say confidently what was actually being counted.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records at least one entry: a quantity of "2" measured units against a sign that may denote a building, chapel, or storeroom, though this is far from certain. The next line seems to mention a road or journey together with a carpenter or craftsman, but the line breaks off before its meaning is clear. Several more lines follow, each badly damaged, that appear to mention an official or title (EN~a), a possible "horn" or similar sign (SI), and finally what may be a reference to honey or syrup (LAL2~a) alongside a still-unidentified administrative term (MUSZ3~a). Because so much of the tablet is broken or worn away, no coherent sentence can be reconstructed — only the outline of a short accounting entry survives, and the rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) 1. 2(N57) — [sign] EN2×E2(?) [a compound sign, possibly "chapel/enclosure"; reading uncertain] 2. KASKAL(?) NAGAR(?) — [broken sign] [...] 3. [...] — [illegible sign] (Reverse / continuation) 4. [...] [...] — [broken] EN~a [broken] A 5. [...] [...] — SI 6. [...] — LAL2~a MUSZ3~a (The tablet breaks off after this point; no further signs are preserved.)
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(N57) |EN2xE2~b|? , KASKAL NAGAR~a# X [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] X EN~a# X A [...] , [...] SI# [...] , LAL2~a# MUSZ3~a#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 076. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005143) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.