Position in chronology
MSVO 3, 80
About this tablet
A small, heavily damaged proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from Uruk, dating to around 3200–3000 BCE — among the world's earliest written records. It records quantities expressed in the archaic numerical system (N14 and N01 signs, likely denoting large and small units of a commodity), paired with sign-entries that may indicate goods such as a crown or tiara (MEN), oil or fat (NI), garden produce or an area measure (SAR), and a possible place or institutional marker (KI ME). The tablet is broken into multiple fragments and is too damaged to reconstruct a coherent single transaction, but it belongs to the administrative tradition of the great Uruk temples, where scribes first invented writing precisely to track this kind of institutional accounting. Its survival, even in fragments, offers a direct window into the moment writing was born.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records a series of entries, each opening with a large quantity unit followed by smaller sub-units — roughly: '13 [units of something],' '11 [units] of [something],' '1× [units] of [something],' '1× [units] of crown/tiara [commodity].' The next readable lines mention oil or fat alongside a partially preserved sign, then what appears to be a garden/produce category alongside a place or institutional marker. The remaining lines are too broken to read. The overall picture is a list of counted or measured goods, probably recorded against categories of items and destinations within a large institutional storehouse.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N14) 3(N01) , [X] 1(N14) 1(N01) [...] , [...] 1(N14)# [...] , [...] 1(N14) [...] , MEN~a [...] [...] , [...] NI~a SA~c# , SAR~a KI ME~a [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(N14) 3(N01) , X 1(N14) 1(N01) [...] , [...] 1(N14)# [...] , [...] 1(N14) [...] , MEN~a [...] [...] , [...] NI~a# SA~c# , SAR~a KI ME~a [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 3, 80. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Land Berlin, Berlin, Germany (P005391) — 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.