Position in chronology
CDLI Lexical 000022, ex. 032
About this tablet
A small, badly broken fragment from one of the very earliest writing systems known — the proto-cuneiform lexical lists produced at Uruk in southern Iraq around 3200–3000 BCE. These lists were not narratives but structured inventories of objects, materials, and categories, used to train scribes in the administrative vocabulary of the earliest cities. This fragment appears to record a series of wooden objects or timber products, each preceded by the numeral '1,' consistent with the format of the archaic Wood (GISZ) list known from Uruk-period archives. It is held at Cornell University and catalogued as part of the global effort to document proto-cuneiform tablets.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet lists what appear to be individual wooden objects or timber types, each counted as one unit. The entries include 'mixed wood / wood TUN3~a,' 'wood AD~a' (a specific timber or wooden implement whose name we cannot yet fully read), a third entry too broken to recover, then 'SI TAG~b GISZ' — likely a pointed or fitted wooden object — and two further entries lost to damage. The reverse of the tablet shows no legible text at this resolution.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[1(N01)] , GISZ HI GISZ TUN3~a [1(N01)] , [GISZ] AD~a [1(N01)] , [...] 1(N01) , SI TAG~b GISZ [1(N01)] , [...] [N] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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-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.
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.