Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 120
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken clay tablet from Jemdet Nasr (ancient southern Iraq), inscribed in the earliest form of writing — proto-cuneiform — around 3100–2900 BCE. It is an administrative record, a running list of commodities (a dairy product, barley, and what appears to be a fish-related entry) each paired with a numeral, the kind of bookkeeping used by early temple or palace institutions to track rations or deliveries. So much of the tablet's left edge is missing that we can no longer see what most of the entries were actually counting or who received them; only the numbers and a handful of commodity signs survive.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of an old inventory or ration list. Most lines are too damaged to read — we can only tell that each line paired a quantity with some item. Where the tablet is legible, one entry records 3 units of something, another records 1 unit of a curd or cheese product, another lists 1 unit of grain (possibly graded 'yellow-green' in quality), and further numbers (1, 1) appear with their commodities lost to breakage. The tablet breaks off, and after the gap the last surviving line reads simply 'fish delivery' (or possibly a fish-related official) — the very end of the record.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse, column entries — left portion broken throughout) [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] 3(N03) , 1(N01) , GA'AR~a1 [...] , [...] 1(N05)#? [...] , [...] 1(N06) , [...] [...] , X 1(N01) , SIG7? SZE~a 1(N05) , 1(N24) , (Break) , [...] , DU KU6~a
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.
Engine notes
read from photo6 uncertain terms ↓
- GA'AR~a1 — A proto-cuneiform sign for a processed food product, often interpreted as a grain or dairy preparation (possibly dried/pressed grain cake or cheese-like product). The precise referent is debated.
- SIG7? — Tentatively read as SIG7 (a color qualifier: green, yellow, or fresh); the question mark in the transliteration signals the editor's own uncertainty. Could alternatively be a different qualifier sign.
- SZE~a — Standard proto-cuneiform sign for barley (Sumerian še). Reading is well-established but the combination with SIG7 is unusual and may indicate a quality or state of the barley.
- DU KU6~a — KU6~a is the standard sign for fish. DU here may be a verb ('to bring/deliver') or a qualifier; in proto-cuneiform contexts the grammatical function of accompanying signs is often unclear.
- N05, N06, N24 — These denote specific capacity or counting units in the proto-cuneiform numerical system. Their absolute values in modern measures remain debated and system-dependent (sexagesimal vs. bisexagesimal vs. area systems).
- X — Unidentified sign(s) in the transliteration; photo does not allow clarification.
Reasoning ↓
Visual examination: the obverse shows a roughly oval clay tablet, pale buff in color, broken at the lower left and upper left corners. The surface is partially eroded but several incised wedge-groups are visible. In the upper register I can make out what appear to be box-ruled columns consistent with proto-cuneiform administrative format. A distinctive circular/radiating impression in the mid-section is consistent with a complex sign (possibly GA'AR or a related commodity sign). Lower registers show angular impressed numerals and further sign-groups, but erosion and the photographic resolution prevent confident individual sign identification. The reverse (lower image, accession number 1928.444 visible in ink) appears blank or heavily abraded — no legible signs detected. The transliteration aligns with the physical appearance: a multi-entry administrative tablet with many broken sections. The numerical signs N01, N05, N06, N24 belong to the standard proto-cuneiform sexagesimal or bisexagesimal systems. SZE~a (barley) and KU6~a (fish) are among the most common commodity signs in Uruk/Jemdet Nasr period accounts. The qualifier SIG7 (green/fresh?) before SZE is uncertain and flagged accordingly. Cannot verify individual broken entries or the exact numeral classes from the photo alone.
Generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 14, 2026 · 1852 in / 1029 out tokens
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] 3(N03) , 1(N01) , GA'AR~a1 [...] , [...] 1(N05)#? [...] , [...] 1(N06) , [...] [...] , X 1(N01) , SIG7? SZE~a 1(N05) , 1(N24) , , [...] , DU KU6~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 120. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005187) — 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.