Position in chronology
CDLI Lexical 000022, ex. 032
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken fragment of a proto-cuneiform lexical list from the Uruk period, the very early phase of writing in southern Mesopotamia (roughly the later 4th millennium BCE). It was not a business record but a scribal reference text — a memorized list of standardized terms, here apparently built around the sign GIŠ ('wood/tree'), used to train apprentice scribes in the fixed vocabulary of the profession. Because so little survives, we can only make out isolated entries, each marked with the numeral notation 1(N01), pairing GIŠ with other signs (HI, TUN₃, AD, SI, TAG) whose exact meanings are still debated by specialists.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This chipped clay fragment preserves a few lines from an ancient reference list, the kind ancient scribes memorized to learn their trade. Each line begins with the count-marker 'one' and then a short string of signs built around the word for 'wood' or 'tree' — pointing to a list of wooden objects, tools, or timber types, though most of the actual words are broken away or too worn to read. One clearer line reads roughly 'one: horn/point attached to wood,' hinting at some specific wooden implement, but everything else on the tablet — the entry that follows and the ones after that — is lost to damage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineEntry 1: 1(N01) — GIŠ ... HI ... GIŠ ... TUN₃~a Entry 2: [1(N01)] — [GIŠ] AD~a(damaged) Entry 3: [1(N01)] — [...] (broken) Entry 4: 1(N01) — SI TAG~b GIŠ Entry 5: [1(N01)] — [...] (broken) Entry 6: [N] — [...] (broken)
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)] , GISZ# HI# GISZ# TUN3~a [1(N01)] , [GISZ] AD~a# [1(N01)] , [...] 1(N01) , SI TAG~b GISZ [1(N01)] , [...] [N] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CDLI Lexical 000022, ex. 032. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA (P330063) — 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.