Position in chronology
MSVO 3, 80
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from Uruk, among the very earliest writing in the world (roughly 3200 BCE). Each line records a numerical entry — quantities marked with the archaic Uruk number signs N14 and N01 — followed by a commodity or personal/institutional designation, separated by the standard case divider. So little survives of the descriptive signs (MEN~a, NI~a, SA~c, SAR~a, KI, ME~a) that we can say this was some kind of tallied account, but not what was being counted or for whom; it belongs to the vast body of accounting tablets that gave rise to writing itself.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is a fragmentary tally sheet. The first entry counts a quantity written with the large numeral sign N14 plus three units, followed by something now lost. The next few lines repeat this pattern — a large-unit count plus one unit, then just a large-unit count — each time followed by a word or phrase that is now broken away, except that one line seems to mention something called 'MEN' (possibly a crown, title, or object) and another pairs two obscure terms that may relate to oil or goods. A further line reads only 'SAR, from/at (a place), ME' — likely naming where the counted goods came from or were registered. The rest of the tablet is too damaged to read, so the actual transaction — what was counted, and for whom — cannot be reconstructed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Column/Line 1) 1(N14) 3(N01) , [broken sign] (Line 2) 1(N14) 1(N01) [......] , [......] (Line 3) 1(N14) [......] , [......] (Line 4) 1(N14) [......] , MEN~a [......] (Line 5) [......] , [......] NI~a SA~c (Line 6) , SAR~a KI ME~a (Line 7) [......] , [......]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
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-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.