Position in chronology
MSVO 3, 57
About this tablet
A small proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from Uruk, southern Iraq, dating to roughly 3200–3000 BCE — among the very earliest written records in human history. It records quantities of commodities including what appear to be jars or vessels (DUG), a beer-related item (KASZ), reeds (GI), and barley or cereal (SZE), alongside numerical notations in the archaic sexagesimal and bisexagesimal systems. The tablet is presented here with its clay envelope or case fragments visible around the central inscribed face, an unusual survival. It is a fragment of the earliest administrative bureaucracy ever recorded — the kind of ledger that helped run the world's first city.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The opening lines are too damaged to read. What survives records: a quantity of roughly 41 or 51 units associated with a vessel or jar type (DUG) and what may be a young animal notation; 2 units given, deposited, or delivered in connection with water/liquid and reed; further entries too broken to read, linked to an entity or person category (MUSZ3); about 31 units of a beer commodity; and a final tally line involving larger quantities — perhaps 61 or more units — associated with barley or cereal, the rest lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] X 4(N39~a) 1(N24) , DUG~a 1(N57) |3(N57).AMAR|[?] 2(N01) , RU A GI [...] , [...] X MUSZ3~a 3(N39~a) 1(N28) , KASZ~b X 1(N14) 1(N01) 2(N39~a) 1(N24)[?] 1(N28)[?] [...] , SZE~a [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] X 4(N39~a) 1(N24) , DUG~a 1(N57) |3(N57).AMAR|#? 2(N01) , RU A GI [...] , [...] X MUSZ3~a 3(N39~a) 1(N28) , KASZ~b X 1(N14) 1(N01) 2(N39~a) 1(N24)#? 1(N28)#? [...] , SZE~a# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 3, 57. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Land Berlin, Berlin, Germany (P005368) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.