Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 085
About this tablet
This is a badly broken proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk/Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), one of the very earliest phases of writing, found at or associated with Jemdet Nasr in southern Iraq. It is a numerical accounting record — a column of quantities (using several different archaic numeral notations) tallied against commodity or category signs, including sheep (UDU) and a scatter of still-undeciphered signs (ZATU753, ME, KID, DUR). Tablets like this were the bookkeeping backbone of early temple or palace economies, tracking livestock and goods long before writing could record connected sentences.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is a fragmentary ledger page. It lists a series of counted items using early number signs — the counts vary in scale (some in the tens, some possibly in the sixties), paired with short notations. One entry clearly concerns sheep. Another line seems to record something 'received' or 'handed over.' Several of the commodity or category signs (rendered here as ME, ZATU753, KID, DUR) can't be securely translated — they may be goods, titles, or bookkeeping marks whose meaning is lost to us. Near the end, a note mentions something 'given' or 'deposited,' possibly involving oil, and the final line invokes a 'great' or 'senior' figure alongside an overseer or classifying mark and a length- or reed-related term. Much of the tablet is broken away, so full context cannot be recovered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] 5(N18) 2(N03) , 2(N34) 1(N14) 6(N01) [...] , sheep (UDU) 1(N60) 2(N52) , 3(N14) 5(N01) , ŠU2 ("into the hand of" / receipt notation) 1(N14) 2(N01) , ME (sign of uncertain value) 1(N14) 4(N01) , ZATU753 (unidentified sign) [...] , KID (reed-mat/plaited-goods sign) [...] [...] , [...] 1(N14) 5(N01) , DUR (uncertain: cord/bond sign) , [...] |NI.RU| ("given/deposited," oil(?) notation) , GAL PA GI [...] ("great" + overseer/classifying mark + reed/measuring term) [...]
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
[...] , [...] 5(N18) 2(N03) , 2(N34) 1(N14) 6(N01) [...] , UDU~a# 1(N60)# 2(N52) , 3(N14) 5(N01)# , SZU2# 1(N14)# 2(N01)# , ME~a# 1(N14) 4(N01)# , ZATU753# [...] , KID~b# [...] [...] , [...] 1(N14) 5(N01) , DUR~b , X [...] |NI~a.RU| , GAL~a PA~a GI X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 085. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005152) — 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.