Position in chronology
MSVO 3, 45
About this tablet
This is a small proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from Uruk-period Mesopotamia (roughly the later 4th millennium BCE), one of the very earliest forms of writing. It is a tally or account listing quantities of several distinct commodities — signs conventionally transcribed SA, MUD, an institutional or divine marker read NANNA, and a 'bird/egg' notation — each counted with the same recurring numeral formula. The exact goods being tracked (foodstuffs, textile materials, animals, or something else) cannot be pinned down with certainty, but the tablet shows the earliest bureaucratic impulse: counting and recording resources sign by sign.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record lists four entries, each opening with the same quantity notation (two of one unit, one of another). The first entry records an amount of something written with the signs LA2 and SA — possibly a deficit or a commodity called 'SA.' The second records a quantity of the goods MUD and BULUG3. The third adds a further count of three units, tied to an entry labeled NANNA (perhaps the name of an institution or estate) and again BULUG3. The fourth records an amount linked to the signs for 'bird' and 'egg,' but the line breaks off before any more detail is given. The back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2(N39~a) 1(N24), LA2(?) SA~a 2. 2(N39~a) 1(N24), MUD BULUG3 3. 2(N39~a) 1(N24), 3(N57) NANNA~a BULUG3 4. 2(N39~a) 1(N24), MUSZEN NUNUZ~a1 [...] (Reverse: uninscribed)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(N39~a) 1(N24) , LA2? SA~a 2(N39~a) 1(N24) , MUD# BULUG3 2(N39~a) 1(N24) , 3(N57) NANNA~a BULUG3 2(N39~a) 1(N24) , MUSZEN# NUNUZ~a1# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 3, 45. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Land Berlin, Berlin, Germany (P005356) — 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.