Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 078
About this tablet
This is a small fragment of an administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), written in the earliest proto-cuneiform script, before writing had fully committed to phonetic syllables. It comes from the Jemdet Nasr region and belongs to the MSVO archive, a corpus of the very first bureaucratic records in human history. The surviving lines are a sequence of numbered entries — quantities counted with archaic numeral signs, alongside a personal name (Szubur) and a handful of commodity or category signs (possibly natron/soapwort, a bird or plant, a storage bin) — the kind of tally kept by an early institution or household tracking goods and personnel. Because the tablet is broken on several edges and many of its signs have more than one possible later reading, much of its exact content remains genuinely unrecoverable.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragmentary tally sheet. The surviving lines list a series of small quantities of goods or people, counted using the archaic number-marks of the earliest accounting system rather than words for numbers. One entry names an individual or overseer called Szubur alongside a counted item that might be a bird, a plant, or some other commodity. Another entry mentions a settlement-related sign together with what may be natron or soapwort. A further line refers to some kind of storage bin, and another to a dagger- or spear-shaped token whose real-world meaning as a counted good isn't clear. The tablet breaks off at the start, in the middle of several entries, and again near the end, so the overall transaction it once recorded cannot be reconstructed in full.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) Line 1: [...], 1 (N30a-unit) [sign uncertain] [...] (broken) Line 2: 1 (N01-unit), 1 (N39a-unit) | 2 (N57-units), 1 (N30a-unit) — AN (sky/divine or commodity marker), GUM (sign of uncertain reading) Line 3: 1 (N01-unit), 1 (N39a-unit), 1 (N24-unit) | 2 (N57-units), 1 (N30a-unit) [...] (entry continues into a break) Line 4: 1 (N01-unit) | 1 (N30a-unit) — Szubur, BU (sign of uncertain reading — bird term, plant, or disbursement marker) Line 5: 1 (N39a-unit), 1 (N24-unit) | 2 (N57-units), 1 (N30a-unit) — URU(settlement)-sign compounded with HI(g), NAGA (natron/soapwort or uncertain category), 3 (N57-units) Line 6: 1 (N01-unit) | [sign uncertain], UB (storage bin/compartment?) [...] (broken) Line 7: [...] SZITA (dagger/spear-implement sign, uncertain referent) [...] (broken) Line 8: [...] 1 (N34-unit?), 2 (N01-units?) [...] | [...] (broken)
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
[...] , 1(N30~a)# X [...] 1(N01)# 1(N39~a) , 2(N57) 1(N30~a) AN# GUM~b# 1(N01)# 1(N39~a)# 1(N24)# , 2(N57)# 1(N30~a)# [...] 1(N01)# , 1(N30~a)# SZUBUR# BU~a# 1(N39~a)# 1(N24)# , 2(N57)# 1(N30~a)# |URU~a1xHI@g~a|#? NAGA~a# 3(N57)# 1(N01)# , X UB# [...] , [...] SZITA~a1#? [...] 1(N34)#? 2(N01)#? [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 078. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005145) — 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.