Position in chronology
MSVO 4, 60
About this tablet
A proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the late Uruk or Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), now held at the Nies Babylonian Collection at Yale. It records distributions of barley and livestock within a large institutional household — almost certainly a temple or palace. Musicians appear twice as barley-ration recipients, alongside a high official (the EN, 'lord') and supervisory personnel; a separate run of entries accounts for she-goats, cows, and a bull under various administrative categories. The tablet closes with what is likely a barley summary total, making it a characteristic specimen of humanity's earliest bureaucratic record-keeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two large measures of barley were allocated to the musicians; one large measure went to the lord, along with a designation that is no longer clear; another large measure again to the musicians; and an unknown amount — the number is entirely lost — to the supervisor. A separate sequence records individual animals and workers: one she-goat, two entries for an overseer category, one item pairing an unidentified category with reed, three women workers assigned to a supervisor, two cows marked as returned or replaced, and one bull disbursed as a ration portion; one further barley allocation rounds out the list. The final line gives the barley grand total: one large measure plus five smaller units, recorded as the sum in hand. Several individual quantities are uncertain due to surface damage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2(N14): musicians (NAR) — [barley] 1(N14): barley — lord (EN~a), A 1(N14): barley — musicians (NAR) [quantity lost]: [barley] — supervisor (PAP~a) [1]: she-goat (UD5~a) 2: overseer/category (PA~a) [1]: [ZATU710, unidentified sign] — reed (GI) [3]: [SZU?] — female (SAL), supervisor (PAP~a) [2]: cow (AB2) — [returned / replacement (GI4~a)] 1: bull (GU4@g) — [BAR: disbursement / ration-portion] 1: supervisor (PAP~a) — [barley] [1(N14)] [5]: [barley] — total / in hand (SZU)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(N14) , NAR# SZE~a# 1(N14) , SZE~a EN~a A 1(N14) , SZE~a NAR# , SZE~a# PAP~a 1(N01)# , UD5~a 2(N01) , PA~a 1(N01)# , ZATU710#? GI 3(N01)# , SZU# SAL PAP~a# 2(N01)# , AB2# GI4~a# 1(N01) , GU4@g BAR 1(N01) , PAP~a SZE~a# 1(N14)# 5(N01)# , SZE~a SZU
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 4, 60. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: NBC 05828 (Nies Babylonian Collection, Yale Babylonian Collection, New Haven, Connecticut, USA) — from uncertain (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P005462). 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.