Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 161
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), likely from Jemdet Nasr, recording quantities of goods — apples or other orchard fruit, containers or vessels, and other commodities whose signs remain unidentified. Tablets like this were part of the earliest bureaucratic record-keeping in human history, tracking the movement or storage of foodstuffs and goods, possibly linked to the city of Uruk itself, which appears as a sign near the end. The tablet is badly broken, so much of its content — including whatever verbal or institutional notations followed the numbers — is lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like an inventory list: one unit of some kind of container or boat, four units of apples or tree-fruit, two units of another container paired with an unidentified item, and one unit of a storage-related item. After that the tablet breaks, and only fragments survive — a term that may mean something was 'given' or 'deposited', a partly-legible entry with an unclear category word, another broken line mentioning water or a wood/commodity term, and finally what might be a reference to the city of Uruk. Too much is missing to say what the overall transaction was.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1(N01) unit(s): MA (vessel/container) 2. 4(N01) unit(s): HAŠḪUR (orchard-fruit / apple) 3. 2(N01) unit(s): MA ZATU735(b) [container-commodity, sign unidentified] 4. 1(N01) unit(s): |GA₂~a1×GEŠTU~c3| (storehouse/container compound sign) 5. 1(N01) [......], [......] (broken) 6. |NI~a.RU| ("given/deposited" — tentative) 7. [......] MUŠ₃~a(?) (broken; unclear administrative referent) 8. [......] A LAM~b (broken; "water/liquid(?)" + LAM~b commodity/wood sign) 9. UNUG~a(?) — [Uruk]
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(N01)# , MA# 4(N01)# , HASZHUR 2(N01)# , MA ZATU735~b? 1(N01) , |GA2~a1xGESZTU~c3|# 1(N01)# [...] , [...] , |NI~a.RU| , [...] MUSZ3~a#? , [...] A LAM~b , UNUG~a#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 161. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005228) — 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.