Position in chronology
MSVO 3, 58
About this tablet
This is one of the world's oldest administrative documents, a proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from Uruk (modern Warka in southern Iraq) dating to roughly 3100–3000 BCE — a time before writing was fully developed into a script that could record grammar or speech. A temple official recorded quantities of barley, birds, aromatic or spice commodities, and other goods, probably distributed to or through an institutional administrator (the sanga). The bottom section gives what appears to be a summary or subtotal entry. Tablets like this are the direct ancestors of all later writing, used by one of humanity's first cities to manage its economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records several commodity transactions under a high institutional official. One account notes 120 units of barley delivered at a location; another logs roughly 880 units of an oily or fatty substance alongside a second commodity. A smaller entry of 30 units covers some kind of bird or fowl. A further 55 units of an uncertain commodity follow, then 73 units combining barley, aromatic ingredients, and a temple administrator's account. The last two lines record a disbursement of a reddish commodity — the second serving as a running total: approximately 335 units of barley distributed under that same heading. Several commodity identifications remain uncertain because the writing system at this date had not yet fully standardized its signs.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2(N34) [= 2 × 60 = 120 units], barley — EN [lord/institutional head] — DU — KI 1(N34) 2(N45) 4(N14) [= 1×600 + 2×120 + 4×10 = ~880 units], NI~a — SA~c 3(N14) [= 30 units], BU~a — TUR — MUŠEN [bird/fowl] 5(N14) 5(N01) [= 55 units], |DAR~a×A|? 7(N14) 3(N01) [= 73 units], barley — 1(N04) barley — SANGA [temple administrator] — KU~b2 — ŠIM~a [aromatics/spice] [blank/separator cell], BA — SI4~f [disbursement/reddish commodity] 4(N34) 9(N14) 5(N01) [= 4×60 + 9×10 + 5 = ~335 units], barley — BA — SI4~f [total: barley disbursement, reddish commodity]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(N34) , SZE~a EN~a DU KI 1(N34) 2(N45) 4(N14) , NI~a SA~c 3(N14) , BU~a TUR MUSZEN 5(N14) 5(N01) , |DAR~axA|? 7(N14) 3(N01) , SZE3 1(N04) SZE~a SANGA~a KU~b2 SZIM~a , BA SI4~f 4(N34) 9(N14) 5(N01) , SZE~a BA SI4~f
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 3, 58. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Land Berlin, Berlin, Germany (P005369) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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.