Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 234
About this tablet
This is a small fragment of an administrative account tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), found at Jemdet Nasr — one of the very earliest forms of writing, before cuneiform script had developed grammatical sentences. The surviving lines are entries in a list: a numeral followed by combinations of sign-groups referring to officials (an 'administrator' or 'sanga'), institutional categories (a house, a storage-bin, a cattle-stall), personnel or workers, and possibly a plow or agricultural implement. The tablet is badly broken, so we see only isolated fragments of what was probably a longer inventory or disbursement record kept by a temple or institutional household.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is a torn scrap of an old bookkeeping tablet. It looks like an inventory list — quantities of something followed by short labels naming officials, storage areas, and workers or livestock. One line mentions '3 units' tied to a house and what might be a female worker; another records '2 units' against what could be a cattle-pen and a leftover balance; a further entry involves a possible plow. The beginning and ends of most lines are broken away, so we can't reconstruct the full transactions — only that this was a record of goods or people being counted and assigned under named categories and officials, in the earliest form of written bookkeeping.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Line 1) [...] , [...] administrator(?) — ME — storage-bin(?) (Line 2) [...] , [...] carpenter(?) — transfer/turn — head/chief (Line 3) [...] , [...] ME(?) (Line 4) [...] , [...] [x] — go/deliver — water(?) (Line 5) 3(N01) , house — |1(N58).BAD|(?) — woman/female (Line 6) 2(N01) , GAR — deficit — SA (Line 7) 2(N01) , cattle-stall(?) — remainder — place — GAR (Line 8) 1(N14) , plow(?) [...] (Line 9) [...] , [...] [x] (Line 10) [...] , [...] TAR(?) — administrator(?)
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
[...] , [...] SANGA~a ME~a UB [...] , [...] NAGAR~a# BALA~a SAG# [...] , [...] ME~a#? [...] , [...] X DU A 3(N01) , E2~a |1(N58).BAD~a|? SAL 2(N01) , GAR LA2 SA~a 2(N01) , AB~a TAK4~a KI GAR 1(N14) , APIN~a# [...] [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] TAR~a? SANGA~a#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 234. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005301) — 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.