Position in chronology
MSVO 3, 35
About this tablet
This is a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from Uruk (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), belonging to the earliest stratum of writing in human history, when scribes were still developing a system of pictographic and numerical notation to track goods and labor for temple or palace households. The tablet is a tally: rows of counted units paired with sign-groups that likely denote commodities, personnel categories, or institutional titles — including what appear to be entries for sheep and a house or estate. Because so many of these early signs (like NUN+EN, NAM2, KAB, or ḪI) have no fixed, agreed meaning yet, much of the tablet's precise content remains genuinely unknown even to specialists; it stands as a vivid example of writing at its very origin, more a bookkeeping code than a fully readable language.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like an old inventory slip. It lists several short entries, each pairing a small count with a sign or two: two units of something marked by the 'sky' sign together with another sign; one unit of a compound sign that might be a title or an institutional marker; a combined quantity of five (four plus one, in two different counting notations) under a term that's hard to pin down; one unit described as 'large'; then a mixed entry that seems to reference sheep and a house or estate, possibly dated to a 'third day'; and finally one more unit recorded next to two signs too worn to read. In short, it's a short list of counted goods or categories kept by an early accountant — but at this stage of writing's history, we can recognize the bookkeeping structure far more confidently than we can recover exactly what was being counted.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2(N01)# , AN MUŠ₃ₐ — "2 (units, numeral partly damaged): AN-MUŠ (sign combination, referent unclear)" 2. 1(N01)# , |NUN~a+EN~a|# — "1 (unit, numeral and compound sign both partly damaged): NUN+EN (compound sign)" 3. 4(N39~a) 1(N24) , NAM₂ KAB — "4 (N39-unit) + 1 (N24-unit): NAM₂ KAB" 4. 1(N01) , GAL~a — "1 (unit): GAL ('great/large')" 5. , ḪI@gₐ ŠA |U4.3(N08)|? UDU~a E2~a GU — "ḪI (qualifying/mixed sign), within: 'day-3' (?), sheep, house/estate, GU" 6. 1(N01) , X X — "1 (unit): [two illegible signs]"
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(N01)# , AN MUSZ3~a 1(N01)# , |NUN~a+EN~a|# 4(N39~a) 1(N24) , NAM2 KAB 1(N01) , GAL~a , HI@g~a SZA |U4.3(N08)|? UDU~a E2~a GU 1(N01) , X X
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 3, 35. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P005346) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.