Position in chronology
MSVO 3, 76
About this tablet
A proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from late fourth-millennium BCE Uruk — one of the world's earliest writing systems in action. It records quantities of cereal (barley or emmer wheat) allocated or consumed under the authority of high-ranking institutional administrators, likely temple managers (sanga officials) associated with a major Sumerian institution. The tablet uses the classic two-column format of proto-cuneiform accounting: numerals on the left, commodity and official designations on the right. Though partly damaged, it is a vivid example of how early writing emerged not from literature or religion but from the bureaucratic need to track goods moving through a large urban institution.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a cereal-allocation record. In one entry, 2 units are assigned to the EN official, with barley and what may be horn or a horn-related commodity noted alongside a KALAM category. A later entry records 6 units of 'land/KALAM' barley consumed or disbursed (GU7) under a BAR (portion/disbursement) heading, overseen by two senior sanga administrators. Several lines at the beginning and end are too damaged to read. The overall picture is of a temple or palace accountant tracking large quantities of grain moving through the hands of the institution's top managers.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] X 2(N14) , EN~a SZAGAN SZE~a SI , KALAM~b [...] , [...] , BAR[?] [...] , GAL~a SANGA~a SANGA~a [...] 6(N14) , KALAM~b SZE~a GU7 BAR , GAL~a SANGA~a SANGA~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 2(N14) , EN~a SZAGAN SZE~a SI , KALAM~b [...] , [...] , BAR#? [...] , GAL~a# SANGA~a# SANGA~a# [...] 6(N14) , KALAM~b SZE~a GU7 BAR , GAL~a SANGA~a# SANGA~a# [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 3, 76. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Land Berlin, Berlin, Germany (P005387) — 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.