Position in chronology
MSVO 3, 04
About this tablet
This is a tiny proto-cuneiform account tablet from Uruk, among the very earliest writing anywhere, dating to roughly 3300–3100 BCE. It does not contain sentences at all — only strings of number-signs paired with commodity or container signs, the raw bookkeeping of an early temple or palace economy. The surviving entries seem to tally vessels and possibly beer, followed by a badly broken line naming further categories (a bird sign, the sky/star sign AN, and an unidentified classifier). Its interest lies less in what it says than in what it is: a snapshot of accounting notation at the very dawn of literacy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records a short list of quantities. First come two numeric entries — '2 units of one measure plus 1 of another' and '1 unit plus 1 of another' — recorded in the archaic number system rather than in words. Then comes an entry of 9 units of some kind of vessel or container. A fourth entry of 4 units, apparently linked to beer, is damaged and only partly legible. The next line is largely destroyed but preserves a bird sign, the sky or star sign (AN), and another sign of unclear meaning, suggesting it introduced a new category of goods. The final line is completely broken and cannot be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2(N40) 1(N24~a), 2. 1(N40) 1(N24~a), 3. 9(N01), SZEN~c(-vessel), 4. 4(N01) [...], beer(?) [...] 5. [...], [...] bird-sign, AN (sky/star), MUSZ3~a 6. [...] (broken, illegible)
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
2(N40) 1(N24~a) , 1(N40) 1(N24~a) , 9(N01) , SZEN~c@t 4(N01) [...] , KASZ~a#? [...] [...] , [...] MUSZEN# AN MUSZ3~a [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 3, 04. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Land Berlin, Berlin, Germany (P005315) — 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.