Position in chronology
CDLI Lexical 000002, ex. 194
About this tablet
This is a small fragment of one of the world's oldest written documents — a proto-cuneiform tablet from Uruk-period Mesopotamia (roughly 3200 BCE), likely a scribal list rather than a record of a single transaction. The photograph shows a broken clay tablet with multiple faces preserved (obverse, edges, and what may be a blank reverse), ruled into boxed columns each holding one counted entry marked by a small round numeral impression (N01) followed by two or more signs. The recurring sign NAM2, paired with terms for barley (SZE), an overseer-type title (PA), and institutional titles like SUKKAL ('vizier/minister') and KINGAL, suggests this is a lexical or administrative list enumerating titled persons, offices, or commodity categories — one of the very earliest attempts to fix bureaucratic vocabulary in writing. Because the script is at the threshold between accounting notation and true writing, many individual sign meanings here remain genuinely uncertain to specialists.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This broken clay tablet records a short list of entries, each counted as '1' and marked with a pair of signs. The entries include: one marked NAM2 and DI; one marked NAM2 and NAM2; one marked NAM2 and URU; one (partly broken) ending in NAM2; one pairing barley with NAM2; one combining NAM2, RAD, and PA (possibly an overseer or ration category); then a line too broken to read; an entry for a 'KINGAL' official or place; an entry combining 'great/large' with TE; an entry for a 'SUKKAL' (vizier or minister), with the rest of that line broken away; and a final line giving a much larger count — forty-three plus an unreadable further quantity — of some unidentified item, the rest of the line lost. The tablet breaks off before we can learn what institution or transaction this list served.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N01) , NAM2@t DI@t 1(N01) , NAM2@t NAM2#? 1(N01) , NAM2@t URU~a1# [1(N01)] , [...] NAM2@t# 1(N01) , SZE~a# NAM2@t 1(N01) , NAM2@t RAD~a@t! PA~a 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , KINGAL 1(N01) , GAL~a TE 1(N01) , SUKKAL [...] 4(N14) 1(N01) [N] , X [...]
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(N01) , NAM2@t# DI@t 1(N01) , NAM2@t NAM2#? 1(N01) , NAM2@t URU~a1# [1(N01)] , [...] NAM2@t# 1(N01) , SZE~a# NAM2@t 1(N01) , NAM2@t RAD~a@t! PA~a 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , KINGAL 1(N01) , GAL~a TE 1(N01) , SUKKAL [...] 4(N14)# 1(N01)# [N] , X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CDLI Lexical 000002, ex. 194. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006046) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.