Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 150
About this tablet
This is a tiny, badly broken fragment of a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk/Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), one of the very earliest phases of writing in Mesopotamia. What survives looks like a short list — probably a record of sheep issued or counted alongside titled personnel, using the numeral-and-commodity format typical of early bureaucratic bookkeeping. So little of the tablet remains that its exact transaction (rations, offerings, or an inventory) cannot be pinned down with certainty.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Only scraps of this record survive. The first line seems to mention some kind of plant fodder and water, though the context is lost. The next lines count out sheep — one here, one there — each tied to an official or title whose exact name we can't fully make out because the tablet is broken at just the wrong spots. It reads like a short tally of livestock handed over to different office-holders, but the damage means we can't say for certain who received what, or why.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Line 1) [......], U2~b(?) (fodder/plant material?), A (water/liquid). (Line 2) 1(N01), MU (year/name — sense uncertain), |ZATU714×HI@g~a| (a compound sign, unresolved as a personnel/title designation). (Line 3) [1(N01)], [UDU~a] (sheep), |U4.(1(N14).5(N08))| (a compound sign combining the U4-element with numerical values 1 and 5), GAL~a (great/large), ŠAB~a (a title, perhaps a cupbearer/butcher-type office). (Line 4) [1(N01)], [UDU~a] (sheep), |U4×X| (a damaged compound sign), DI (sign-name/unclear function), GIR3@g~b (a personnel or livestock category term).
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
[...] , U2~b#? A 1(N01)# , MU# |ZATU714xHI@g~a|# [1(N01)] , [UDU~a] |U4.(1(N14).5(N08))|# GAL~a SZAB~a [1(N01)] , [UDU~a] |U4xX|# DI GIR3@g~b#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 150. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005217) — 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.